We said "I DO" a year ago?!? Anniversary #1

Wow...where did the last year go? Oh, I know...we got married in October...Keenan left for a couple weeks of training...we went on a honeymoon to Costa Rica the end of November...there were a couple holidays...February 1st we found out we were moving to Misawa...begin whirlwind move preparation and moving...June we got to Japan and the rest has been quite the adventure (and is documented on this blog!). And that's how we got here to our 1st Anniversary.

Here's a quick look back and then on to our day of celebration!

We started off the day by exchanging a couple gifts...we decided that we could either do the "traditional" gift of paper or the "modern" gift of time...I got Keenan a watch, not that creative, I know, but his old one was old. He was very creative with my gift and even when I think about it now I'm still kinda surprised he was able to come up with it by himself (sorry honey, but you know that's true). I got an origami bouquet of flowers and framed Japanese calligraphy! Love it!

When you open the back of the frame this is inside.

Here's how we spent our day. We drove around Lake Towada, passing through the Oriase Gorge on the way there. It was a beautiful day and the leaves were really starting to change! Many of the places will look familiar if you've seen previous posts about Lake Towada or the Oriase Gorge, hopefully you'll enjoy seeing them again in autumn.

We had lunch at a restaurant along the lake. The menu was all in Japanese and only had a couple pictures. Luckily, there was one employee that spoke just enough English that we knew we were ordering chicken curry and beef and onions!

Japanese style chicken curry, salad, "pickles" and soup.

Beef & onions, salad, "pickles", rice, soup and  the right upper
bowl was veggies, not sure if they were pickled or just cooked.

We ate in the restaurant upstairs.

From lunch we took short walk along the lake shore and then continued driving around the lake.

Paddle boats, I really want to rent one of these someday!

Even the moss was showing off it's fall colors!

For a second I had a mustache,
then I had a little spider try climbing in my nose...

For dinner we had reservations at Kiminoya, a yakiniku restaurant in Misawa. Of course when we got there they didn't have a record of our reservation, but they made room for us in a really fancy upstairs room...haha...you'll see why I laugh when you see the pictures. But can't complain, the food was great and apparently the drinks were too...

Yes, you read that right, All you can Eat AND Drink for 2 hours.
3,800yen ($38) per person.
The food choices were on this side of the menu,
be sure to click on the picture to see what some
of our choices were, such as pork womb...

Here were the drink choices.

Yummy! Beef short rib, pork short rib, beef tongue, shrimp and veggies.

Yes, I waited for it to cook before digging in!

Now that's what I call fancy!

Looks like we could have sang karaoke too!

How fitting, a diamond advertisement!

This is the outside of the restaurant.

This was a gift from a local Japanese guy that Keenan works with:

I always think the descriptions are funny!
"Best things are like water."

1800ml bottle of sake

Up next: Keenan will gone for a month...what will I do?!