Tag Archives: marriage

Wedding Pictures – at last!

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Finally we have got our wedding pictures online for you to see!

Check out orumu.org/wedding for the whole slideshow deal!

The wedding and tea party were great, we had a great time in Northern Ireland with a celebration at my home church (photos snitched from Jonny & First Antrim!) and a sneaky honeymoon at the always beautiful north coast!  Some pictures have found their way online of that too.

Thanks to everyone who could celebrate with us, and to those who sent greetings but couldn’t be there.  And to those who didn’t do anything but were thinking about us!  We are settling into life in Oasa, but it’s pretty busy, so I don’t know how often I can update, not that I was updating that often!  But keep an eye on twitter and facebook for shorter bites!
The picasa albums are here:

1. 結婚式 – Wedding 2. レセプション – Reception
3. ジョンの母教会 – First Antrim Celebration 4. 北アイルランドの新婚旅行 – Honeymoon in Northern Ireland

Graduation, wedding, celebration, honeymoon….

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A lot has happened since I last wrote something of any length on here…

In July I graduated from OMF’s Japanese Language Centre!  This means I have finished their course and they need space for new people…  Well not exactly, I also wanted, if possible, to graduate before I got married so all the aspects of new life could start together.  I am not sure if this was a good idea or not though!!  But it has all worked out well so far!  Technically then I have been working at Oasa Church and doing IT work for OMF since my graduation, but things have been so turbulent with moving apartment, getting married and so on that it is all only really settling down now!

That’s right!  I’ve moved apartment!  Now I am out in Oasa rather than in Sapporo City itself.  Oasa town falls within Ebetsu City, which is the next city to the east of Sapporo.  It is a bit more country side than where I was before, which was much more semi-suburban city-ish!  But it seems like a nice place to live, we are very close to the church we will work at (as opposed to taking two trains and an hour like before) and a fellow missionary who has gone on a 7 month-or-so home assignment has lent us their car for the winter, so it is all pretty convenient!  at least at the moment!

You probably noticed the other bit of news in the paragraphs above there.  Emily and I finally got married on the 21st of August 2010!  We had the ceremony in Sapporo Fukuinkan church in Sapporo city, it was a great day with a lot of friends and family to share it with!
Then we went down to Ibaraki on the 22nd and had a good old (Japanese style) barbecue with those of Emily’s family and friends there who couldn’t make it up to Sapporo.
Then we headed for Northern Ireland where we had another great night with everyone in First Antrim on Friday the 27th!  It was great to be home and see everyone again!!

After the do in First we finally got some time to ourselves and went up to stay in Portstewart on the north coast!  Not the most exotic place to go you might think, but for me it was very relaxing and a great way to spend a few days and for Emily it was a pretty out of the normal holiday (half way around the world from her home!).  And it is hard to beat the north coast really!!

We left Northern Ireland, spent a evening and a night in Dublin and flew back to Japan, got back on Saturday at 10pm Japan time…!  Time to sort out the flat and get everything organised.  Lots of legal bumph to get addresses and names changed and all that kind of stuff to do as well!

So that’s a bit of a summary, spurred on by 5am jetlag wide awakeness!  Once we get the apartment sorted out and all the stuff done we need to get past this week, hopefully there will be some photos and more info for those who are interested!

Tokyo and iOS 4.0

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Today has got to be the furthest I have travelled and returned home within one day…  I got up at 6am to get the train to the airport, flew to to Tokyo and got the train into town, then in the evening was back at the airport flying back and getting home to Sapporo just now at 11pm!  ”What did you forget?” you might ask…   But forgetfulness wasn’t the reason for the trip.  The whole event was a highly organised and coordinated trip to go to the British Embassy (they only have an embassy in Tokyo and consulate in Osaka) to apply to get a CNI (Certificate of No Impediment) which will let Emily and I apply to get married here in Japan.  According to the website I had to attend an “Interview” at the embassy, which I had to apply for (an application so I could apply to get the document I need to apply to get married…), but the whole ordeal took a matter of minutes, with the short walk down the hallway to the next room to pay the fees I was in and out of the embassy in around 30 minutes!  All that travelling for 30 minutes!!

But hopefully it will be worth it!  I took stamps for them so they could send me the certificate in the post rather than going back again to get it, and I got a form that I need to fill in and post back to pay for the actual certificate as I won’t be there to pay for it on the day of issue.  Strangely they wouldn’t let me pay for it while I was there and had the cash, but rather I have to send it.  We had a brief discussion about how I could just go outside and fill in the forms and post them in  that very day which would only take a day or two off the actual time the embassy was responsible for my money…  So I will maybe wait a little while before sending the form in, until that point I was quite impressed by the efficiency of the embassy, but not being able to pay in advance was a sharp jerk back to the reality that the small patch of land I was on was technically British (is it?) and I wasn’t not eager to please and super efficient Japan for that half an hour!  Hopefully it will process and work and I won’t have to rush back to Tokyo with a few days to spare before we actually get married…

Anyway!  A few days ago I upgraded my (already ageing) iPhone 3G to iOS 4.0 and it was lovely for a little while.  But today’s trip to Tokyo tested it to the limit.  I was listening to music and catching up with podcasts (and Bill’s latest messages from First!) while finding my way with maps and GPS, looking up train times online, writing texts and an email or two, tweeting the odd tweet and even watching a YouTube video or two at some points of non-activity.  This was normally not an issue, it could do all of these things fine, and probably still can as long as two don’t happen at once!  But after a short time using it, it started to be unbearable.  It was very slow responding to key presses, particularly on Japanese input, it ground to a halt more than a few times apps were crashing left right and centre and even once it needed an all out reboot!

So long story (slightly) short: I want to go back!!
But it isn’t easy.  From looking around it seems that I will basically have to go through the “jailbreak” process to install the older version 3.1.3 of the operating system…  So my question is, should I just jailbreak it?  My reasons for not doing it before were that it just seemed like too much hassle, and the little risk involved was probably not worth any of the benefits…
But if I am going to have to do it anyway to get back to functionality maybe I should just do it?  Has anyone out there jailbroken their iPhone 3G and have any experience?  Good experiences?  Bad experiences?  What are the risks and what are the main benefits?  Would Softbank go nuts on me?  If I went to the apple store (urgh) would they restore me back to 3.1.3 or tell me I should be glad to have 4.0?

婚約式 – The Engagement Ceremony

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Photos!

On Sunday the 22nd of November 2009, Emiri and I got officially engaged.

Now I thought we were engaged before, but that’s only part of the story here in Japan.  Japan has a lot of traditions that stem from the Buddhism and Shinto religions, from Confucianism and just from having a culture and people of it’s own.  Marriage, as you’d expect, has a whole bunch of these traditions, one of them is 結納 (ゆいのう ‘yuino’, for more info) which is basically an exchange of gifts between the bride and grooms’ families.  This exchange of gifts formally marked the engagement of the couple and there are a few other things around it that I won’t go into, largely because I am not at all sure that my understanding is correct!

The church in Japan quickly recognised that if Christians are to get married they should have something to go in place of these various ceremonies and traditions, as they are based in buddhism and shintoism.  Otherwise, families and onlookers may feel something is not right and the engagement and marriage aren’t valid.  So in place of this engagement process the church created a 婚約式 (konyakushiki – engagement ceremony, or betrothal ceremony).  While the original Japanese traditions have pretty much died off, the engagement ceremony in the church is still done.  This is what Emiri and I did last Sunday!  We did it at Itayanagi Chapel in Aomori, where I spent 3 months of my short term year, and Emiri attended for 6 years and actually lived in for a few!

We went down by Ferry last Monday, spent the week half on holiday (although Emiri had a lot of homework) and half preparing for the ceremony.  We got to go to the Thanksgiving celebration on Saturday (Surprised I could fit in my suit on Sunday) and on the way home the following Monday stopped in Hakodate to see Nari-Nari and Hana-chan, who used to live in Aomori, but now live and work in Hakodate.

Overall the ceremony was great.  I had kind of expected it to be a kind of formal proposal of marriage, or agreement to get married or something like that, like a formal pandering to culture…  But really it was more significant.  It really was about us gathering with friends and relatives to aknowledge before them and before God, His work in bringing us together, and then promising to seek to honour Him as we prepare to get married.  In that regard it really was a strong affirmation of the purposes of the marriage we intend to, and are preparing to enter into, particularly in a modern culture that doesn’t hold marriage in the regard that it used to be held.

Some detail about the ceremony itself… Continue reading →