It was a sunny June afternoon in northern Japan, and the perfect setting for a wedding reception: an airy room with large French windows opening onto a garden; mountains of flowers and a cake with more tiers than a Balinese rice field. Then, one of the groom's pals stepped forward to make a speech.
And tripped over before he could reach the podium.
Recovering, but still drunk, he launched into a speech that provoked hysterical (and often embarrassed) laughter from the other guests, not because it was particularly funny, but because nobody could understand his burbling. On top of it all, remnants of the wedding dinner clung to his face and he kept referring to the bride by the wrong name.