Kosuge doesn’t appear on most people’s radar. Not wedding planners. Not travel editors. Not even most people who live in Yamanashi.
It’s a mountain village of about 700 residents, tucked into the northeastern corner of the prefecture where 95% of the land is forest. Ancient forest. Protected watershed within the Chichibu-Tama-Kai National Park, feeding the headwaters of the Tama River, the same river that runs 135 kilometres through Tokyo before reaching the bay. Two hours from the capital by car. A lifetime away from it in every other sense.
How We Discovered NIPPONIA Kosuge as a Wedding Venue
Dee found Nipponia a number of years ago now. That’s what she does. She looks at places most people walk past and sees what they could become. When she approached the owner about hosting a wedding there, his response was understandable.
“You want to do what here?”
Yes. A wedding. In the garden.
He’d spent some time in Melbourne, which turned out to be lucky. He had enough experience with international celebrations, enough open-mindedness, to pause and think about it rather than just say no. He said yes.
That first wedding at Nipponia was a 37 Frames original. We’re proud of that. We’re proud of being the ones who see what a place can become before anyone else does. Since then, other wedding companies have followed and begun hosting celebrations there too. Which is, in its own way, a kind of compliment. When you open the door to somewhere new, you can’t be surprised when others walk through it. What matters is that we saw it, and that our couples got something nobody else had experienced before.
A Sailor Moon and Studio Ghibli Themed Wedding in Japan
This particular wedding was unlike anything we’ve done here before. Or anywhere, really.
The couple flew in from the United States with a small group of guests. Intimate. Intentional. The kind of celebration where every person in the room is someone who genuinely matters. And they brought with them a vision that was completely, unapologetically theirs.
Sailor Moon.
The bride wore a Sailor Moon headdress. Not as a novelty. Not as a costume. As an expression of identity. The anime that shaped her, the character she connected with growing up, brought into her wedding day with real confidence and zero irony. It was iconic. There’s no other word for it.
And woven through the day, a nod to Studio Ghibli. The music from anime favourites scoring the moments between the ceremonies and the conversations and the meals. If you’ve ever watched Spirited Away or My Neighbour Totoro, you know what those soundtracks do. They make everything feel suspended. Slightly outside of time. Which is exactly what Kosuge already feels like, so the pairing was almost uncanny.
Garden Ceremony at a 150-Year-Old Japanese Residence
The ceremony took place in the Japanese garden at Nipponia. Vows exchanged among the kind of quiet that only exists when you’re surrounded by mountains and forest and the nearest city is hours away. No traffic. No crowds. Just the couple, their people, and a place that felt like it had been waiting for them.
Nipponia itself is extraordinary. The main building, the Ōya, is a 150-year-old traditional Japanese residence, once owned by a family who made their fortune in silk. It’s been renovated with real sensitivity. Sophisticated design furniture alongside the original timber beams and architecture. The concept behind it is unlike any hotel we know: the entire village is the accommodation. Traditional homes converted into guest rooms. The village onsen is the spa. The staff are residents. They call it “turning a village of 700 into one hotel.”
For a wedding, that idea takes on a completely different dimension. It felt like time had stopped and this incredible Japanese village was entirely theirs for the day. Their guests wandering the lanes, exploring the property, settling into rooms that are older than any building most of them had ever slept in. The intimacy of the scale made everything feel personal. Private. Like a world within a world.
Michelin-Starred Dining with Ingredients from the Village
Dinner was a Michelin-starred affair, prepared by the resident chef using seasonal ingredients sourced almost entirely from the village itself and the surrounding mountains. Farm to table isn’t a marketing phrase here. It’s just how things work. The rivers yield freshwater cherry trout. The hillside farms grow wasabi and buckwheat. The forests provide what the forests have always provided. Every dish was rooted in Kosuge’s land, its seasons, its people.
For a destination wedding couple from the US, this is the kind of dining experience that simply doesn’t exist at a conventional venue. You can’t manufacture it. You can only find it, in the right place, with the right relationships.
Why Couples Choose Off-the-Map Venues for Destination Weddings in Japan
We’ve done a couple of weddings at Nipponia now. Each one different. Each one shaped by the couple who chose it. But they all share something. A willingness to go off the map. To trust us when we say, there’s this place you’ve probably never heard of, and it will change the way you think about what a wedding can be.
That’s the work we love most. Not the logistics, though we’re meticulous about those. Not the photography and film, though Tracey’s team captures these days with an eye that twenty-plus years of experience provides. It’s the discovery. Finding places like Kosuge. Seeing the vision before it exists. Understanding what a space can hold before anyone has tested it. And then making it happen for couples brave enough to say yes to something completely new.
Kosuge won’t stay hidden forever. Places this remarkable rarely do. But the version of it that existed on this wedding day, the quiet, the light, the Sailor Moon headdress catching the afternoon sun in a 150-year-old Japanese garden… that was ours. And theirs. And that can never be replicated.
Planning Your Own Destination Wedding in Japan
We’d love to hear what you’re imagining. Whether it’s a mountain village or a Tokyo rooftop, a ryokan in the snow or a shrine by the sea, we plan, photograph, and film destination weddings across Japan for international couples.
If this kind of celebration resonates, let’s talk.
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