One thing I’ve known about Japan for a long time is that they have arranged marriages. (I learned this from an episode of Happy Days back in the 70s, don’t ask.) While I assumed this meant stern parents who decided who their children would marry based on their own whims, in reality omiai (lit. “looking at one another”) is essentially a structured formal meeting between two people (and sometimes their families) to explore the possibility of getting married.
While the majority of Japanese couples have adopted the strange Western tradition of renai kekkon or marriage for love, omiai is still surprisingly common — in fact, before my wife met me she had arranged meetings with two other men, but luckily for me they didn’t hit it off. All things must evolve with time, of course, and Japan’s arranged marriage meetings have adapted to the 21st century, with companies offering various services to help people meet that special someone, including one from Yahoo Japan.
Yahoo Japan’s popular omiai service.
