Wedding Bells

Aug. 7 we went to Otaru. Otaru is known for their glass and our host mom's hometown! I think that the train ride there is the most beautiful and peacful thing I have even seen. I have been there 4 times now adn I just love it!! It was my Husband's frist trip, but he agreed with me about the train ride. On the train you can see the ocean out one window and the mountains out the other!
The town its self is very easy to get around. They are very use to have foreign people there! We sawe a lot of cute little animlas made out of glass, and we saw huge works of art made from glass! It was amazing! we got a few things there, but we didn't have too much time as we had to get back to Sapporo to meet my former school mangaer.
We met up with my manager for some more izakaya at Tsubohachi. We eat so much adn drank a lot! My manger lived in New Zealand, so she has some English skills. The funniest thing was the ice cream that she order at the end. It had tofu and ice cream and some weird flavoring. She took a huge bite and her face told us all we needed to know. "Do you want to try it?" she asked... I did. It was pretty bad. Hubby wouldn't try it after both our faces!
Aug8 we just hung around Sapporo to keep out of the way. The bride and groom were really busy, so we could entertain our selfs in Sapporo. Hubby wanted to go back to the good ramen shop that the bride took us to, so we ate lunch there. We came back home in time to eat dinner with the bride and spend a bit of time with her. She was pretty stressed out but her work was almost done!
Aug 9-The bride left early to get her dresses fitted (they rent the dresses and jewelry here). She had 3 dresses to wear. One for before the cermoney, one for the actual wedding, and one for the after party. We went with her mom and dad a bit later. The taxi that drove us to the station was really scary...he had the olympics on his phone and was watching the tv/phone as he drove us!!! OMG!!! The train ride was uneventful and I practiced my speech the whole way.
The next taxi to take us to the place was really scary! The driver didn't know how to get there, so Hubby and I gave the driections! Her mom and dad had never been there, and since we were the only ones who know where this place was it fell to us to tell the driver how to get there!!! Great, take driections from the foriegners!!!
Then we had a before party with lavander champane. The waitress spilled a glass of it on my dress... not such a good start for me. Then we had the wedding. It ws so beautiful!! The bride looked amazing and her face was so happy. He was so handsome in his suite and looked just as happy. I cried of course!
Then it was time for me big speech. I was the last speaker and I was sooooooooooooooo nervous! If I only have to do the English part I would have been fine, but I had to Japanese too! I ws so nervous and happy that I cried half way though so her mom came up to resuce me and read the words to me! I did fine with the English part... ha ha. I was the only person to hug the bride! Because I was crying, she cried!
After that, I could really enjoy dinner. Our table was the "Star Wars" table and we had all the people who spoke English there. They had a crazy game at the end with paper money to bid on 4 gifts. The first one was a melon (melons here are wicked expenisve, so it was a great gift!). The next was a box of Kobe beef stakes (again, expersive!), third was a soccer ball signed by... the groom! HA HA! The final gift was for the whole table to bid on. Our table won!!!! We got a real bottle of Dom Peraion! It was amazing!!! There was none left, but we shared it with the bride and groom!
There was a second after party and we went for a little while. It was a good time. Her parents came and picked us up from the train station. We all laughed about the funny things that happend to us during the day.
Today (Aug. 10) we are going to go to her family's house and not the house were she was living. We will eat ramen for luch one more time before we have to come back home.
The wedding was so worth it to be here for! I wouldn't have missed it for anything! I'm glad that we could be a part of it!