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| The ceremony |
We all piled in
the bus early Saturday morning and made the hour or so drive to Osaka for the
wedding. After checking in and setting up the decorations that Mom sent
over, it was time to get into the tux. So much for not seeing the bride
before the wedding. Over here, the bride and groom have their professional
wedding photos taken before everything goes down. Guess it makes sense to
do it before we get all sweaty and our clothes get wrinkled.
The ceremony was
performed in the hotel's chapel by a real Japanese priest. The girl who
did all of our planning was all apologetic about the priest being
Japanese. It costs more to have a foreigner do it. I know that most
of the foreigners who do it have no qualifications of any kind and just do it
for the money so I was happy to have a Japanese real guy do it. He did a
good job. His English episode was a bit funny. I think he must have
watched some US TV evangelist show and practiced up or something.
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coming out of the chapel |
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| brothers and sisters |
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| Mrs. Itakura |
After the
ceremony, there was a short break before the reception. In Japan
everything is planned down to the last second, so there was no rest for Yuki and
I. By the end of the reception I was hungry cuz we had no time to eat and
I had a headache from all the camera flashes. Despite all that, I managed
to keep my smile and I think I even managed to hide the fact that I was
extremely sleep deprived.
Mrs. Itakura (my
Japanese mother from Mobara) gave a speech and managed to find a whole bunch of
wonderful things about me. Thanks! Actually,
even when the mic was handed around to everyone to give speeches, nothing embarrassing
popped up at all, even from Gub. I am sure that at whatever we do when we
get back to Canada, I won't be so lucky again.
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| outside the Thai restaurant |
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| Okonomiyaki |
After the
reception ended, all the younger crowd (and Lorraine) headed out for Thai food
and another party at a restaurant near the hotel. I guess you could say we
were a bit rowdy cuz it didn't take long before all the other customers in the
place vacated and we had the place to ourselves.
We all spent the
night at the hotel and then headed to the bus station to see everyone off for
the airport. But before that we all went out and met up with Michiko and
Kirin and Mayu and Kotaro for lunch at an Okonomiyaki restaurant.
There were more
photos and goodbyes at the bus station and then after a bit of sightseeing in
Osaka with Andrew, Jenny, Paul, Miwa and Nao, Yuki and I headed back to
Yachiyo. Got a call on the way home from Janeen telling us that they didn't
get on the plane As it turned out, everyone wound up going home together
on Paul's flight the next day.
