A Decade Ago

A decade ago today I was a scared 24 year old getting married in a foreign country. Andrew and I met - a girl from the West Coast of Canada and a boy from the East Coast of the USA - in Japan, and we needed to get married in order to expedite my immigration process. We were married at Sakura City Hall, with only our boss Margaret Otake and our Japanese teacher Ikegami-sensei in attendance (and with their valuable help we translated all of our necessary documents).

The whole day was surreal. It was a rainy Tuesday morning in our area of Japan, and we had breakfast at a McDonalds before taking the train out to City Hall. The entire process took maybe 2 hours - and was rather anti-climatic. We signed our translated documents (included in that pile were signed affidavits from our respective embassies saying we were of sound mind to get married), waited around, and then a clerk called us to the counter, handed us our Japanese Certificate of Marriage and that was it.

Margaret took us out for lunch to a fancy French restaurant (the name escapes me but I remember it had an enormously long table made from a single log), and then I went home and Andrew to work for the afternoon. When he came home we celebrated with a bottle of Dom Perignon... and tuna casserole. Trust me, tuna casserole was a treat for us in Japan!

Sweetie, it's been a wild ride... two countries, two states, another degree (and another one soon), a child, a house... and lots of ups and downs in between. I love you. You drive me to utter madness sometimes, but I still love you.