Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Wedding ceremony

On March the 25th we will have our wedding ceremony here in Kobe. A lot of things need to be arranged before that, from clothes to flowers. I have only been to one wedding (my mom and her wife) before, so I can't compare too much with Dutch weddings but a Japanese wedding is on an average far more expensive than a Dutch one. An average Japanese wedding is about 3-4 million yen, (157 yen is 1 euro, so do the math).

Our wedding isn't that expensive, we will only spend 2 million yen (which is still a lot of money). But the good things are that first you will really have something nice for your wedding, and the second thing is that you will get back around 30.000 from everyone (we will invite about 45 people, so 1.350.000) so you will get half of the money back.

We have chosen our clothes, wedding dress/tuxedo and kimono/hakama, we have almost send out all our invitation letters, so the next thing will be what we want on the ceremony itself. After this we should choose the food (which was delicious when we tried it a couple of months ago), flowers, balloons, hotels for people who have to stay over, wedding gifts, etc.

Most of the guest are Mayuko her friends, I will only invite 2 because I havenÂ’t made a lot of friends yet (I am desperate please mail me I need friends ;), no joke), her family, and my family will fly over from the Netherlands (my mom and lientje, will stay for 2 weeks, and my dad and my brother will stay for 2.5 week).

I am looking forward to all, but I am also excited to meet the whole family, and if the two families will get along with each other should I care about that?

I am looking forward for some comments from people who also had their wedding in Japan.

Greets, and matane (see you again)
Dave

Saturday, January 20, 2007

Photo's from our holiday in Toba Mie-ken

With the winter holiday we went to Toba for 2 nights and visited some local tourism spots, here are some pictures:



Here am I and the Meoto Iwa (夫婦岩) or the Husband-and-Wife Rocks. They are joined by a shimenawa (a heavy rope of rice straw) and are considered sacred by worshippers at the neighbouring Okitama-jinja. In Japanese Shinto belief, the rocks represent the union of creator gods Izanagi and Izanami. The rocks therefore celebrate the union in marriage of man and woman. The rope, which weighs over a ton, must be replaced several times a year in a special ceremony. The larger rock, said to be male, has a small Torii at its peak.


Futami Sea Paradise, which had some great shows!


Ninja Village near Ise, it was funny to see ninja's haha, normally you only see them in movies but this time I could be like a ninja, see ninja shows, and one even tried to attack Mayuko (I tried to hold him off with my umbrella but his fake Katana was to strong)


An Ama is a female pearl diver, and she did a small demonstration for us (it was really for us, because on that day the weather was pretty shitty so we were the only ones who were watching. See more info


Playing with dolphins at Futami Sea Paradise. First time for me to be this close with these beautiful animals, and to really play with them using balls was fantastic.


Together eating dinner in our hotel room :D


An attraction in Park Espania, where it was minus 31 degrees... cold.


Our dinner, more came later one. It was all Japanese food but I enjoyed it a lot.


Our morning view on the ocean from our hotel room.


Our room :D

Saturday, January 13, 2007

Mothers and their children overseas

This post is for my mom.

My mom is a wonderful woman, and lives in the Netherlands far away from where I am now. Well the thing is that I have my moments that I miss her, but not that much as she is missing me because I started a new life, and everything is existed for me.

My mom is having a pretty hard time so now and then and she doesn't always know how to deal with things.

Now I am searching for parents who are expering the same thing as we do. A mother with her child being on distance. How do you deal with it, how do you contact, etc.

I am looking forward of any comments here, for me but mainly for my mom.

Please have a look on her website Kidsoverzee. (It's in Dutch but you might want to see the pictures or respond on that website.

Thank you.