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Originally Posted by MMM
I have been to a couple weddings in Japan in the last few years, (and am anticipating a couple more) and for me the sheer volume of gift giving is brutal. I understand the meaning of 結婚貧乏 (is that the right term?)
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結婚貧乏 means having to live a simpler, more frugal life after getting married. It's said of a
woman who worked and lived not so frugally until she got married.
The term you are probably looking for is ご祝儀貧乏, meaning spending so much cash for weddings and funerals.
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I have hosted several exchange trips between high school-age students and elementary school-age students to Japan. Usually the Japanese kids would come in winter, then we would go visit in summer. Without fail the host parents in Japan would spend hundreds of dollars on gifts for the students and their families even though the American families sent comparatively paltry gifts with the Japanese students home. This often led to desperate phone calls to me: "They bought my son a Nintendo DS and all we gave them was a block of cheese. What do we do?!?"
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This is so funny and I can see it still happening 1,000 years from now. You should write a book someday. I'll buy a few copies at Kinokuniya.