Our Japan Trip - a few pictures

We had a wonderful trip to Japan for Sherry and Shin's wedding. Here are a few pictures from our trip (VERY few in the 800+ we took!).

We arrived in Osaka around Midnight on the first night (Friday). We always woke up around 4:30 am their time so we had an early breakfast and toured Osaka around our hotel. We were surrounded by very nice shopping - Chanel, Tiffany's, Louis Vuitton, and the like. We met up with Momoko, a friend from undergrad who lives in Japan, had lunch and took a 2 hour train to Fukui.

Above is dinner the night before the wedding at a Japanese BBQ style restaurant in Fukui. We took our shoes off to eat and had short skewers of various meats to dip in a variety of sauces. Sherry's family and friends from Taiwan were with us, along with two friends from Japan that we went to undergrad with.
The wedding day! Here we are in the waiting area before the ceremony.

The reception followed the ceremony with LOTS of food - fish, shrimp, lobster, beef, noodles, dessert, cake, sake... wow! Above, Craig and Sherry's high school friend, Lisa, are sampling sake that Shin's Aunt made.



The happy new couple!

Weddings are earlier in the day so in the afternoon we went walking in Fukui and saw the historical museum and attached gardens (gorgeous!). We had a nice group dinner that evening.


The next day we went to register the wedding at city hall. Here is the new couple walking, leading the way to city hall.

We left city hall and had a big lunch at Shin's father's house. Here is a picture before lunch began.

Following lunch, Shin's mom made special tea and we had a tea ceremony. It was Craig's favorite kind of tea from the trip.

We then went to a paper making place, had a tour, and then made our own paper. Above is Sherry's brother's postcards going on the vacuum dryer. Craig's paper turned out really well so Shin wrote "Kennedy Family" on it in Japanese characters so we can frame it with other Japan pictures. Mine matched Craig's but was more on a first grade level of cuteness instead of a professional level. Shin wrote on mine as well but it doesn't have high hopes of getting hung on the wall. :-)

From Fukui we went to Kyoto by train.

Rice and wheat were growing throughout the areas we saw and were often on both sides of the road as we travelled.

Our hotel in Kyoto had a zen garden outside of our room. It was very peaceful and pretty.

In Kyoto we saw many temples, a park with gardens, and a big garden adjacent to one of the temples (above). Irises and Lily pads were blooming. We stayed in the Higashiyama area of Kyoto.

This was the first temple we went to, Sanjusangendo, right next to our hotel in Kyoto. The sign is in many languages and this was true in many areas of Japan where we went. It was surprisingly easy to navigate Osaka and Kyoto without knowing Japanese.

Other temples that we saw include Kiyomizudera and the Heian Shrine and gardens. We walked around others but didn't go in since we only had one day in Kyoto. We also went to Maruyama park and the Kyoto hand craft center - Kyoto is famous for pottery. We accidentally walked into a Marshall Arts facility where there was a women's league doing archery with very tall bows that they shot in a very ceremonial way that was pretty to watch and interesting to see since we had read about that type of archery at a temple earlier in the day.
We returned to Osaka by train and met Shin, Sherry, and her family there for dinner.

Osaka city view from one of our hotel rooms. We got to see friends, temples, cities, suburbs, and a beautiful wedding - it was an amazing trip!

While we were away, Corrine vacationed with the grandparents and Uncle Pat held down the fort with Maggie. When we got home, Corrine was taller, grew 1.5 shoe sizes (?!?) (she got to do her favorite thing in the world and get new shoes with Grandma), had a larger vocabulary, and learned to pedal the tricycle at Grandma's - wow!