東京

As most of you know, I've been pretty busy with wedding planning, but I think it's starting to ease up just a little bit. After driving hundreds of miles for the first few weekends after the engagement, we finally were able to pick a reception site. I thought that we'd be able to breathe a little easier after that, but then the only suitable date there was March 31st, which was only 5 months away! Yikes, no time to rest!

After several hundred more miles of driving, we finally decided on a church nearby. Ideally, of course, I would have preferred to have gotten married at Canaan Taiwanese church, as Canaan has more meaning than any other random church in SoCal, but since we decided to get married closer to our parents, random church it is.

Wedding dress and bridesmaid dresses have been selected and ordered, and so the only urgent things left are photographer/videographer/florists which we should have booked by the end of the month.

With all that done, one would think we could relax, but nope. We decided to make our short engagement, even shorter, by deciding to go to Japan in February, the month before our wedding. Why, you ask? Well, most of you know I was an exchange student in Japan in high school, and my host-sister is getting married! They invited me, and I figured, why not? This would be a great chance to see people I haven't seen since high school, as well as to see an authentic Japanese wedding (even if it's Western style, it'd still be kind of neat to see it with a Japanese twist.)

And I figure since I'm going to Japan, might as well make a trip out of it, and spend a whole week there. Since the wedding is in Tokyo, I figure I'll just hang out in Tokyo for the whole week; there's certainly more than enough to do. Besides, my year in Japan was in Ibaraki prefecture, a few hours northeast of Tokyo, so I actually never really got to visit Tokyo, and I always felt I kinda missed out on a big part of Japanese culture that way.

And so rather than just simple sight-seeing, I really want to take in the culture, like eating at a depachika (デパ地下 / vast food courts in the basements of department stores, kind of like in Taiwan, but apparently more massive, and some very famous and high-class), visiting a cos-play (コスプレ) restaurant (where waitresses dress as anime characters, maids, etc.), and having breakfast at the Tsukiji fish market where all the chefs in Japan go to buy their fish, fresh off the boat.

And since we got a whole week, there's probably time for day trips to Nikko, Kamakura (both very famous places for temple sight-seeing, including the famous icons the Sleeping Cat and the three monkeys (see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil). I'm hoping there may be time to check out the onsen (hot water springs) in Izu Hanto, basically a resort area near Tokyo famous for its many onsen and views of Mt. Fuji. It's the place Tokyo-ites go when they want a weekend getaway. Don't know though, because February in Tokyo is pretty chilly, 40s-50s I think.

Looking forward to this trip. I think of it as a kind of reward for (hopefully) getting all the wedding prep done early. But now that we've gone to Japan, going to have to pick a different place for the honeymoon. Any ideas?