Registering your Marriage in Japan (if you and your Japanese partner were married outside of Japan)

One of the first things I learned when Ryosuke and I moved to Tokyo (shortly after our wedding in Texas) was that apparently our marriage was not actually valid in Japan (yet). We had a beautiful, legally binding ceremony in Texas several months earlier, and we both assumed that marriages in one country were valid internationally. Isn’t that how weddings work? Because I’ve definitely seen enough TV shows and movies where one character suddenly realizes that the crazy, drunken wedding they had on some tropical island ten years earlier was, in fact, valid and now they need to track down their spouse and legally divorce them before they can marry their sweetheart (except, plot twist, they usually end up actually falling in love with their current spouse and live happily ever after together on said tropical island).