Isamu Tomioka met his wife, Midori, when he was still in school. She was the mother of one of his classmates and 21 years his senior, but he didn’t let that stop him from marrying her.
Isamu and Midori’s unusual love story went viral in Japan after the Shizuoka couple spoke about their relationship on a popular television show. The 32-year-old man said that he first saw Midori at a parent-teacher at his school when he was a minor. She was the mother of one of his classmates, and he recalls thinking that the woman was very beautiful. When they met again, 20 years later, he was attracted by the woman’s mature and dignified look and contacted his ex-classmate in order to get close to her. Midori rejected his advances at first, thinking that the significant age difference made them incompatible, but she was eventually overwhelmed by his persistence and grew to like him too.