Valentine hearts are tied in cultural knot
KITCHENER — She’s a 31-yearold piano-playing public relations specialist from Osaka, Japan.
He’s a 29-year-old race-car fixing transmission-shop service adviser from St. Thomas, Ont.
“Total opposites,” Eric Kipling said at high noon on Valentine’s Day, an hour before he wed his sweetheart, Miku Yodoi, in the Wedding Belle Chapel at city hall.
“I think it’s like any couple. You just look for that person who is strong where you’re weak and vice versa. That’s Miku and I. We just work so well together.”
Five years earlier, on a Valentine’s Day first date, they went out for sushi in Toronto. She was going to Humber College, working on her English, after coming to Canada a year earlier. Public relations was her passion. Soon, Eric would be too.
She’s a food nerd from the massive port city of millions in the centre of Japan. He’s a fast-moving, pit-crew mechanic from the other side of the small-town train tracks where Jumbo the elephant was famously flattened by a locomotive 132 years ago.
On Tuesday, the Kitchener residents exchanged rings and we-do’s in front of Eric’s family. Miku’s parents were home in Osaka. But he got to meet her family on a three-month visit to the city of shining castles, floating gardens and rooftop ferris wheels.
“It’s so black-and-white to how society is there — but all in a good way,” Eric said of Japan. “Everybody is so much more polite and courteous. As Canadians, that’s what we pride ourselves on. So, to meet somebody else who’s even more-so, it’s like, ‘Holy Smokes!’ Their culture is so beautiful.”
And so different, said Eric. Those wondrous contrasts are the pillars of their love.
“When you are in a relationship, you try to understand the relationship and accept the person,” she said. “Because we are from different cultures, we put in extra work to understand each other. I think that creates our bond, makes our bond stronger.”
On Tuesday, there were three more bonds to formalize with wedding bands at the city hall chapel after the Kiplings left for another sushi celebration.
February can be cold. But Valentine’s Day, chapel officiant Pat Fretwell knows, is always a warmly welcomed date for the lovehappy. “Love is still in the air here,” she said.