Our First Anniversary

This past weekend, Adam and I celebrated our one year anniversary on the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. For those of you who are wondering why we celebrated on June 13^th instead of the 28^th (the actual date we were married), allow me to explain. Last year, the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary was on June 28^th. This feast changes every year, but it’s always on a Saturday. It’s like how Easter changes every year, but is always on a Sunday and in fact, this feast changes according to how Easter changes. So, our anniversary will almost always be in June and will always be on a Saturday. Although we didn’t know this feast day changed every year, it’s rather nice to always have our anniversary on a Saturday.

Adam planned our anniversary date. He made me breakfast while I slept in and then we went to the Hana Festa (Flower festival). It was quite the process to get there using the trains, but we finally arrived. This was the 20^th anniversary for this garden and it really was beautiful. We could have spent the whole day there. The garden has three large rose gardens and then other park space and random things going on- like musicians playing.

After the park, we went to Ogaki and had a private Mass with Fr. Rey. It was such a blessing to be able to attend Mass on this special Feast and also on our anniversary. Father had prepared a little script for us to renew our marriage vows and everything.

Lastly, we went out to eat at a restaurant near the church. A friend of ours called to book a reservation for us and as soon as we entered, the hostess knew who we were and led us to our table. Unfortunately, the menu was entirely in Japanese. Although, I could read some of the katakana, it was still rather difficult to know what things were. Our waitress came and explained a little how the menu worked. Left for a bit, and came back with a bunch of pictures of food. In the end, we had a very delicious meal.

Our First year went by really quickly, but has been so good for us. I’m really glad that we spent it in Japan. It really has ended up being a one year honeymoon.