Amami Superman Photography

My friend, Daigo Nakatani, held his yuinou on July 11th and asked me to take the photos. I was honored he asked me to take them considering I've never taking photos of a yuinou before.

My knowledge of a yuinou is very limited but I'll try my best to explain what a yuinou is. A yoinou is an engagement ceremony where both families come together. To my knowledge, the ceremony is for the man to offer different things and money for the daughter's hand in marriage. It all starts out with some special soup I wasn't able to get a good look at.



They held the yuinou in a room at a hotel specifically made for ceremonies like this. They also have tatami rooms (bamboo mat rooms), but they opted for a room like this. This is the sign they had outside the room to let the people who are participating in the ceremony know which room to go to. They had a few other ceremonies in progress when we first arrived in the morning.



After drinking the special soup they brought out, the man's mother and father bring a list of the things being offered and present it to the woman's family. From what was explained to me, the list is a list of the things on display at the front of the room. The different things on display represent different things that are supposed to bring good luck, long life and things of that sort. I'm not exactly sure what those "things" are, so sorry. In the old days, the man had to go out and pay for these things but now days, they just rent them from the hotel or wherever.




Daigo's fiance's name is Hisami. Her mother runs a sort of hostess club. I wouldn't really call it a hostess club but it falls in that category. Her club is rather large and my wife's relatives go there for special occasions as a second place to go drinking after the first place. I've been to her club maybe twice and she is very good at getting a large group to have fun.







The next part of the ceremony involved the 2 families drinking the other family's sake. Hisami is drinking the sake of Daigo's family.







One thing that I really find fascinating is how the women in Japan can be so formal. From the flowery formal speech to the petite movements that make everything seem of the up most importance. I'm not trying to put Daigo's father down but I got a laugh when the next part of the ceremony was the "kanpai" (cheers speech), and after they drank he says, in a kind of a loud voice, "Umai!" which means "delicious!" It just reminded me of a old western where a cowboy would yell out "whiskey!", down the shot and slam the glass on the bar and say, "That hit the spot!"



The next part of the ceremony consisted of a light meal. The special soup they brought out is called "suimono", which they also drink during New Years.



After the "suimono", they brought out sashimi. They had tuna and kanpachi which I think is yellowtail, I'm not sure.





I'm unsure of the terminology of the obi. I know that an unmarried woman is able to wear a beautiful sophisticated tied obi while a married woman wears an obi that is tied to look almost flat as seen here worn by Hisami's mother.



Hisami told me that this obi was worn by her mother on her mother's Coming of Age Day when her mother was 20 years old.

I used 2 cameras to take these photos and took over 600 photos in the space of an hour and a half. I borrowed a Canon EOS Kiss F with a 18-55 f/3.5-5.6mm lens. It was my first time using a Canon and it wasn't a bad experience even though I was unfamiliar with how to adjust the different settings. The only thing I can say bad about the Canon was it had a pretty noisy shutter. I was kind of embarrassed to continually snap away with it. I can't say it was a bad camera or a good camera, but I can say that I still prefer my Nikon because I know how to use it, kind of...

There were plenty of other photos that I wanted to share but I had to cut them down as best I could and not lose too much of the story. It took me some time to go through all of them an pick out the keepers. I was pretty frustrated with myself. Most of the photos were out of focus or had motion blur. The lighting was poor even though they had this hideous floodlight type light shining from one of the corners of the room. I wanted to lower the aperture or up the ISO to get faster shutter speeds but I still don't have a feel for that kind of thing yet and was afraid of getting a too thin depth of field or a too grainy photo for some of the shots. Although I didn't take very many good photos, it was a learning experience. Just one thing that I realized, the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 isn't good for taking group shots. The center of the photo is in focus, but the people on the outsides are a bit out of focus.