Wedding Ring Odyssey

Well, after approximately 10 solid hours of ring shopping spread over 2 days, we finally have winners. Sure, even though 10 hours represents a good day's work, it really doesn't do justice to our odyssey, so here are the gory details:

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Saturday we left the apartment at 11am and ventured north to the Shinjuku district of Tokyo arriving just in time for Yumi's 12:30pm undisclosed "beauty appointment." Factoid: Shinjuku station is the busiest train station in the world, serving over 3.5 million per day! It is crazy. While Yumi was becoming more beautiful in some secret way (and despite my inspections, I couldn't figure out what way), I was left to my own valition at a book store. After the mysterious appointment was over, around 1pm, Yumi picked me up and we started the fun. Eight hours later with stops for only a tux fitting, a nice noodle lunch, and a quick snack, we suspended the search for the night and enjoyed a yummy Indian dinner. A quick aside: all restaurants here give you wet towels before the meal which I've become accostomed to. Cheap restaurants use disposable "moist towellettes" and nicer restaurants give you warm, wet, cloth towels. I should also point out that all day, I was subjected to fond lamentations of days gone by in Shinjuku because she spent 9 years in the area (Sophia University "the Princeton of Japan" as she loves to remind me, and then her first job after graduating.)

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We left the Indian restaurant around 10pm and 3 train transfers and 2 hours later got home around midnight; exhausted.

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Seven hours (and about 10 shops) of actual ring shopping wasn't enough, so Sunday we soldiered on, leaving the apartment around 4pm and arriving in Yokohama station around 5pm. We spent 2 more hours looking around before finally deciding on our rings. Originally we had wanted matching rings but we didn't even come close to agreeing on a design so we opted for two different rings. When we went to purchase them we were told that if we opened a credit card at the department store we'd get a 15% discount. While that was a no-brainer, the 45 minutes of paperwork was pretty painful. Of course, it only got worse. With 15 minutes left to actually make the purchase, we hurried back to the counter and were told that it was only a 10% discount if we ACTUALLY USED THE CREDIT CARD THEY JUST GAVE US! To get 15%, we had to pay in cash! What exactly was the point of the credit card? Just chalk it up to one more confounding Japanese experience. So Yumi ran off to an ATM to get cash; a lot of cash, but came up empty - the ATMs stop dispensing cash on Sunday evenings at some point before she got there. So after all of that, we left empty-handed and resigned ourselves to just enjoy a well-earned Thai dinner. After I write this post, I will go to an ATM, get arm-loads of cash and walk to the station to actually pay for the rings.

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One last aside: we were told we could have up to 15 or so letters for engraving and Yumi piped up "how about 06.23.08 Y to B?" I was horrified! Apparently that is the common inscription in wedding rings in Japan, though. Nevertheless we went with the simple "June 23, 2008."

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