"For mother, it wasn't something to celebrate," said the soft-spoken 35-year-old, whose "bride" is a virtual reality singer named 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 didn't stop him from spending two million yen ($17,600) on a formal ceremony at a Tokyo hall.

Around 40 guests watched as he tied the knot with Miku, 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 said, using an honorific that is commonly employed in Japan, even by friends.

Since March, Kondo has been living with a moving, talking hologram of Miku that floats in a $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 her by cell phone that he's coming home, she turns on the lights. Later, she tells him when it's time to go to bed.

He sleeps alongside the doll version of her that attended the wedding, complete with a wedding ring that fits around her left wrist.

Gatebox, the company that produces the hologram device featuring Miku, has issued a "marriage certificate", which certifies that a human and a virtual character have wed "beyond dimensions".

Kondo's path to Miku came after difficult encounters with women as an anime-mad teenager.

Eventually, Kondo realised he had been in love with Miku for more than a decade and decided to marry her.

"Miku-san is the woman I love a lot and also the one who saved me," he said.

And while Kondo says 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 can't cheat, age or die, he points out.

"I'm not seeking these in real women. It's impossible."

eNCA/AFP

AFP