I got curious and checked Daijirin and it says that it means (among others) that a couple runs away to marry because they couldn’t get their parents’ permission. So I could imagine that this last bit might have been the shocking part for your Japanese friends?
45 pages… wow… 
checks the dropdown
Oh! A manga 
While we are talking… I will finish 人間椅子 as well as Kafka this week, and my Flesh&Blood mateys are taking their time atm, so I was thinking about reading Autumn Prison as a non-spooky spooky book in-between (it’s only 180 pages, which sounds like 2 weeks-ish even with other stuff going on). From the Bookwalker hype it seems to be a good idea to start it on Nov 7th, I guess? (didn’t read the abstract though…) What do you think, would you be interested? (Or anybody else, for that matter, of course!) 
We could even reuse the old discussion thread if we like…