Beware the Bridal Magazines

So I live in Japan and I teach English, so as you can guess (from the fact that you are reading this blog in English) that English is my first language. Honestly and truly.... it’s my only language. Sure I have a smattering of French, I can swear in a few other languages, and my Japanese is well... terrible. I can say “It’s cold, no?” and other variations on that mundane and obvious question to state that it’s hot or humid. I can also answer yes, no, and ask for more water. Yep, linguistically I’m not very fast or useful; I am as useful as a unicycle. (Is it a, or an, unicycle? An sounds wrong. Look I can’t even speak on language right!) The point is that I don’t speak or read the language of the country in which I currently reside.
So you may be wondering, and rightly so, why I would waste my money of buying a magazine in a language (or technically three written languages; hiragana, katakana, kanji) which I cannot even begin to read. Why? Why?! Because it’s a bridal magazine and it has pictures!


Yep I’ve reverted to the 5 year old who walks up to a shelf and pulls out the biggest book with the shiny cover and begins randomly thumbing through the pages. I literally picked up magazines and did the finger flip, and as pages sped by me I would quickly discern whether the images were worth looking at at a more leisurely pace, and thus was it worth paying for.


There were a couple magazines that were held closed with some weird yellow criss-crossed rubber band device. I quickly dismissed this as an option since I was not allowed to preview the pages. It was possible that the giant bold type kanji on the front was shouting to me ‘1 in 2 Chance of winning a million dollars Canadian!’. While this is obviously highly unlikely, it didn’t really matter since I couldn’t read a word of it anyway. The only kanji I can recognize is the symbol for minutes, which usually is pre-empted by a number, and is often the clear clue of how long you should be frying or boiling the frozen food I’ve bought.


Yet, my inability to read the magazine I bought, I have continued on to buy more than one. (I think its 2 and ½ because one I bought because it was cheap and local) So now I have these thick magazines, filled with international, and Japanese style, wedding dresses and other wedding paraphernalia. Oh dear.


The issue with this is not singular, there are multiple issues.


• One; Many of the styles in the magazine are high fashion. This means they may(be) beautiful or they may(be) fun to look at, but they would never work into my traditional and less fashion conscious wedding day.


• Two; I’m not sure if this is the type of magazine, or if it is because it is published in Japan, but there are NO models even close to resembling the average body-shape, little alone MY body shape. Between the fashion models and the Japanese models, these girls have no curse or excess body fat. I mean I’m not huge, but I’ve got my curves! So looking at these pictures is not as inspiring as I hoped, and a little depressing.


• Three; This I KNOW is a Japanese thing, they enjoy seeing prices in advertisements and articles. I remember only occasionally reading in Cosmo and finding a tiny bracketed prices as they told you how to get the fashion look ‘for less’. These magazines are selling wedding dresses! Big ticket items! Like one step down from house or car! And they are displaying prices! *faints* Yep, I would see a gown and start to warm towards it, and then BAM 896,050 yen. Now the exchange rate fluctuates and such, but a VERY rough estimate into Canadian dollars is like $8,960.50. Yep, not on my budget.


So yes, while I have enjoyed my momentary day dreaming and fantasising, I think I have deduced that me and the magazine racks should avoid each other. I think I shall return to the ‘Green’ (and cheaper) option of looking at used (or tragically unused but bought) wedding dresses again. *sigh*


But when I go home to Canada... and they have English magazines... *evil chuckle*