SOFTWARE, JAPAN, SELF-ACTUALIZATION AND

So, this weekend we attended a wedding dinner party with Ayako’s family. It was the first time we got to celebrate our wedding with them, and it was the first time I had met several of her cousins and aunt / uncles.

During the dinner, I presented a video of our wedding ceremony and reception from 9-19-2009. Making the video was a fun process, and I look forward to sharing it with everyone else when I again step foot on US soil.

However time consuming the video was to construct, it wasn’t the hard part for me. Instead, I had to practically open up the ceremony with a speech in Japanese.

So, imagine if you will, a room of 25 faces, many of them new, giving you their undivided attention. Their expectations are probably high, and as you begin to speak you can only assume every twitch of their face is a masked grimace as you undoubtedly butcher their beloved language. That was me, the one doing the butchering, and the following is the carcass (minus some introductory material which I ad-libbed - i even made a joke in Japanese, ha):

皆様. 本日は、ご多忙にもかかわらず、私たちふたりのためにお運びいただきまして、誠にありがとうございます。
Everyone, today, despite your busy schedules, you came here for us, and we are very grateful.

私たち二人がこうしてゴールインできましたのも、皆様のおかげです。
The two of us have crossed the finish line, in no small part thanks to you.

これから皆様を見習いながら、明るく楽しい家庭が築けるよう、一生懸命努力していくつもりでございます。
We look forward from this point to working hard and building a happy family together.

とはいえ、まだまだ私達は未熟者です。
However, we are young and still have a lot to learn.

これから一緒に生活していく上で、つまずいたり悩んだりするだろうと思います。
I’m sure that together we will have questions and worries about our future.

そんな時には、皆さま方のご指導を仰ぐつもりでおりますので、どうかご支援頂けますよう、お願い致します。
At such times, we will humbly and thankfully look to you for guidance.

結びになりました が、みなさまのご健勝をお祈りし、お礼の言葉とさせて頂きます
In closing, we hope and pray for all of your good health.

本日は本当にありがとうございました。
We are really thankful for today.

これからも今日のように皆様が集まってくださることを望んでいます。
And we hope to see everyone together like this again.

あらためて心より、厚くお礼申し上げます。
From the heart once more, I am deeply grateful.

I pieced the bulk of my speech together from various sources found across the internet along with my own dictionary work. I read the speech from a piece of paper without any english lettering (romaji) - reading just the kanji and hiragana … yay! However, occasionally I had some notes on the readings of the kanji (the notes were in hiragana) to help me over some of the tough parts.

All in all, doing a speech was a great experience.

This is very very loosely translated.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 21st, 2010 at 7:49 am and is filed under life in Japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.