Akihiko Kondo’s mother refused an invitation to her only son’s wedding in Tokyo this month, but perhaps that is not such a surprise: He was marrying a hologram.
“For mother, it wasn’t something to celebrate,” said the soft-spoken 35-year-old, whose “bride” is virtual reality singer Hatsune Miku.
In fact, none of Kondo’s relatives attended his wedding to Miku — an animated 16-year-old with saucer eyes and lengthy aquamarine pigtails — but that did not stop him from spending ￥2 million (US$17 540) on a formal ceremony at a Tokyo hall.
About 40 guests watched as he tied the knot with Miku, who was present in the form of a cat-sized stuffed doll.
“I never cheated on her, I’ve always been in love with Miku-san,” he told reporters a week after the wedding. “I’ve been thinking about her every day.”
Since March, Kondo has been living with a moving, talking hologram of Miku that floats in a US$2,800 desktop device.
“I’m in love with the whole concept of Hatsune Miku, but I got married to the Miku of my house,” he said, looking at the blue image glowing in a capsule.
He considers himself an ordinary married man — his holographic wife wakes him up each morning and sends him off to his job as an administrator at a school.
In the evening, when he tells the hologram by cellphone that he is coming home, she turns on the lights. Later, it tells him when it is time to go to bed.
He sleeps alongside the doll version of it that attended the wedding, complete with a wedding ring that fits around its left wrist.
Kondo is not alone: Gatebox, which produces the hologram device, has issued more than 3,700 certificates for “cross-dimension” marriages and others have sent him supportive messages, he said.
“There must be some people who can’t come forward and say they want to hold a wedding. I want to give them a supportive push,” Kondo said.
His path to Miku came after difficult encounters with women as an anime-mad teenager.
“Girls would say: ‘Drop dead, creepy otaku,’” he said, using a Japanese term for geeks that can carry a negative connotation.
He said that a woman at a previous workplace bullied him into a nervous breakdown and he became determined never to marry.
However, eventually Kondo realized that he had been in love with Miku for more than a decade and decided to marry it.
“Miku-san is the woman I love a lot and also the one who saved me,” he said.
And while Kondo said he is happy to be friends with a “3D woman,” he has no interest in romance with one, no matter how much his mother pushes for it.
Two-dimensional characters cannot cheat, age or die, he said: “I’m not seeking these in real women. It’s impossible.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS