More pleasant updates

Well I went to Kyushu and survived. Barely. I went for a wedding and the trip went well except for the fact that I forgot one important thing. I won't tell you what, but here's an analogy-it was like going on a snowboarding trip and forgetting your snowboard. There I said it now lets never mention it again. Kyushu was nice. The wedding families paid for our hotel (and gave us 10,000 yen each to help pay for the trip). I had basically the most scenic view one could ever expect for a Sunday morning breakfast:
The wedding itself was interesting. Well actually it wasn't really. It was a Western wedding with a reverend and everything. He was of American background but born in Japan. The whole wedding was in Japanese. The wedding reception-now that was interesting. We got in there, found our tables and I found this sitting on my plate looking up at me:
Fortunately the food got more appetizing after that. We listened to about four boring speeches where half the people (at least 200 hundred in total) looked to be nodding off (including me). Then they broke out the alcohol which I think was what everyone was waiting for and then they started bringing out some different courses of food. Soon the equivalent of the best man and maids of honour (none of them actually participated in the wedding) got up to make their speeches. Only by that time, everybody was busy drinking and eating and talking and not a single soul stopped to listen except for the bride and the groom and myself-who couldn't understand a single word being said. The speakers literally faced the married couple and made their speech while being completely ignored (and drowned out) by the rest of the crowd. I was appalled.

Went to an airshow today. It was interesting for me, not so much for Fumiko. She went home after about an hour. I certainly could have predicted that! I'm not sure why she wanted to come in the first place. I was a bit shocked to learn that she had no idea what "kamikaze" meant. We saw a picture of one in the pamphlet. It's a Japanese word for goodness sakes! She said when she was young the teachers never talked about any of that stuff. Here's a pic: