Soya Milk Skin

Rowan's Kosher plane food. (He signed me up for Hindu non-vegetarian which was far less exciting)

Tired and jet-lagged, we arrived to be confronted with this. It does SO much more than just flush!

^_^

At Rowan's cousin's wedding, we became the tourist attraction!

I feel very privileged to have attended a Shinto Wedding, seriously awesome experience!

Inside the Shrine

This is a rubbish picture but I just wanted to show how incredible Yuri's outfit was! And it looks like it might be fairly comfy like a really really fancy duvet

We were all asked to sign the guestbook and everyone else signed in Japanese so we tried to translate our names, Rowan's and mine are translating the meaning (Jasmine and Rowan tree) and Ewan's should be phoenetic....

Course 1: many types of fish

Course 2: Marinade of salmon with confit of ginger and seaweed sauce

Rowan had to do a bizzare walkabout for his role as Godfather to Yuri and Andrew's baby

'Dessert of Happiness' (I managed to not photograph 3 courses in between - 'Otsukuri', 'Present from the sea' and 'Bressing from the earth' - I guess I was too hungry)

Yuri's friends did a dance performance to Abba's 'Dancing Queen' (Rowan's little brother also did a karaoke to Wonderwall but I had to delete the video)

We arrived in Nara dazed and confused on Friday evening after leaving London on Thursday morning. After a few minor mishaps along the way everything went pretty well. We watched many, many films. Tron is rubbish. If you haven't see it and end up watching it for some reason, consider; Emperor Nero, Gladiatorial games vs. Jesus and the Father-son-holy spirit. This will simultaneously make it more interesting and reveal how dull and unoriginal the Entire Film is. Toy Story 3 is amazing, WHY DOES IT HAVE SUCH A STRONG EMOTIONAL EFFECT!? There were other films but by then I was going in and out of sleep and I can no longer remember. 

Andrew (the groom) met us from the bus in Tenri and then we went to meet his brother at the station. This is how helpful Japanese people are/ how few tourists there are here at the moment: Andrew's brother had left the train at the wrong stop and a Japanese lady came up to us to try to explain where he was when she saw us waiting on the platform. How nice!

Japanese weddings are fairly strange. The Shinto part was lovely and very interesting, I went to a Buddhist wedding a few years ago so I thought there might be some similarities but it was pretty different, I guess because it originates from Samurai traditions rather then monks'. It was the dinner bit that was bizarre. It began with a spotlight entrance of the bride and groom to James Blunt's 'Beautiful'. Then photos. This was followed imediately by the cutting of the cake and the bride and groom shoving of large quantities of cake into each other's faces in the style of a Japanese gameshow. Then photos. Then the first course. Speech and photos. Second course. Speech and photos. etc.

Lots of beer and sake. Lots of fun!

私はすぐに書き込みします！

xxx