Back in the groove.....

Alright everyone - I know we've been slacking on the blog, but truth be told, we haven't been doing much since I got back. Don't worry though, Spring is on its way in, and we have a couple of cool weekends planned for the month, and beyond - we'll be bloggin' again!

In the meantime, this past weekend was beautiful, so we decided to take a quick trip to Harajuku - a district of Tokyo. We'll be taking many day trips in preparation for my parents and teeny-bopper sister coming this June - we can't wait!
We visited the Meiji shrine, because we hadn't seen this one yet. Although they tend to all look the same after a while, they each have something special about them. In this picture, the [obligatory] Tori Gate is made of 1,700 year old cypress trees brought in from Taiwan. Pretty cool, huh?


It never fails, whenever we visit a shrine, we run into a wedding - they say that's good luck; I tend to agree - Cicely and my marriage has grown so much stronger since we've been in Japan - it sucks to be away from family, but it's great to focus on each other so much.



Here's the start of the wedding procession...it was very somber - almost like a funeral procession. Fortunately, the bride and groom were smiling!

























Here's another couple getting married - notice the different style of Kimono. The men's wedding Kimono always stays the same.












There were also a few baptisms with very beautiful Mother/Baby combinations, but as luck would have it, our camera battery died. Yeah, we haven't done this in a while and forgot to charge the battery the night before - we promise that won't happen again!

More to come after this weekend....stay tuned!