Cooking, cleaning, driving, shopping at supermarkets and possibly taking out the trash -- Princess Nori's marriage Tuesday to Tokyo Metropolitan Government employee Yoshiki Kuroda opens the door to a new life as a commoner and homemaker.

But her aides and friends said they are not too concerned about the future of the former princess, who has been cloistered inside the Imperial Palace for 36 years, citing the way Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko raised their only daughter.

She became Mrs. Sayako Kuroda through the wedding. The Imperial Household Agency will formally record her departure from the royal family Wednesday.

Under the Imperial House Law, a female member of the Imperial family must relinquish her title if her husband is a commoner, like Kuroda.

The Empress has always been very keen to let her daughter get used to participating in regular society since the princess was young, experts on Imperial affairs said.

The Empress "often had the young princess have and use money by herself at bookshops or flower shops," said Hiroshi Takahashi, a professor at Shizuoka University of Welfare.

She was allowed to take the Yamanote Line train in Tokyo together with her friends while a plainclothes policewoman watched her from a distance, Takahashi said.

The Empress also made the princess cook and clean by herself.

Experts say the Empress' eagerness to educate her daughter about the outside world is the result of her own background as a commoner. She was born into the founding family of the predecessor of Nisshin Seifun Group Inc., Japan's largest flour miller.

While the Empress handled many household duties by herself, even after marrying the then Crown Prince, these rare acts for an Imperial family member led to arguments and sometimes criticism, they said. But she never gave up her personal style.

Princess Nori brought her own lunch to school every day, which had been cooked by the Empress, recalled Yoko Imai, one of her friends from junior high school.

The princess has often cooked for Kuroda and brought lunches she had cooked to the Yamashina Institute for Ornithology in Chiba Prefecture, where she worked as a part-time paid researcher until June, one of her former associates said.

Kuroda, 40, and his wife have rented a condominium near the palace. They will move to a new condo next spring, which is now under construction. Before they chose where to live, she checked out the nearby supermarkets, according to her aides.

The government will provide a 152.5 million yen one-time allowance to the departing princess.