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Beach Wedding Photos

Published November 24th, 2008 in Photos, travel and wedding. 0 Comments

Click here for the slideshow of all the professional beach wedding photos.

As I mentioned in my previous post, Hawaiian Wedding Day 4, we paid to get some extra pictures at Lanikai Beach. In all, there are 116 professional pictures, and then an extra 63 that were taken with our camera. Lots of pictures are duplicates, so you will have to go through them yourself. It is kinda hard picking out which picture is the best, so we just kept them all!Here are a few highlights:

Here are the links to our 2 different sets on Flickr:

Enjoy! Look for pictures from Day 5 in the next day or so.

Hawaiian Wedding Day 4

Published November 19th, 2008 in Photos, travel and wedding. 1 Comment

View the slideshow of Day 4 here.

Since the wedding was over, we were a bit more relaxed and glad to have it out of the way. It was a great wedding, but now it was time to enjoy going all over the island with everyone!

First plan was to get up at 5am and go climb Diamondhead to see the sunrise. Sounded like a great plan, until I found out that it was closed for maintenance. So Lark, my dad, Miki and I decided to just watch the sunrise from Waikiki Beach (if we could even see it). Later I found out that Lanikai Beach was a better place to see it. And on top of that, it started to rain… so we didn’t see anything at all. Here is what the view was like:

After the rainy sunrise, we went back to the hotel and had breakfast with everyone. After breakfast, my dad took Yukari and me to the place for our beach photos. Upon arrival, we picked out the clothes to wear and Yukari got her hair and backup done. Then it was off to the beach for our photos!

We will put those pictures up tomorrow. They turned out really great! So I won’t go into much details about those pictures now, and just skip over that part of the day.

Next up was the sunset dinner cruise! While we were waiting for boarding time to come we were looking at the ocean and saw many types of tropical fish. I had no idea that they would just come right up there and saw easy to see. After a bit of fish watching and picture taking, we finally got on board and set off. Dinner was very good, but then before we knew it, the sun was starting to set. So we ran out to the deck and took many pictures. Here is one of the better ones.

After the sunset was over, we went back and had our dinner that consisted of Steak and Crab Legs. Watching my mom eat them was quite fun. Then watching her go crazy dancing was even more fun! I’ll have to see if I can find a video of that and upload it to YouTube or something.

Here is one final picture to show here. One of the teams that I am in at work, they bought me a camera that is like a polaroid as a wedding present. Before the cruise, we got a picture of everyone and they wrote a message on it for us. Here is what they look like:

Anyways, check out the photos here or watch the slideshow!

Wedding Photos!

Published November 17th, 2008 in Photos and wedding. 0 Comments

We finally got the wedding photos on Saturday night! Spent Sunday uploading them to Flickr and then Yukari was busy writing comments for almost all of them. There are actually a lot pictures, 333 of them in fact. They start from us getting ready in our hotel room.

Then as we arrive at the chapel.

The actual ceremony.

And some pictures after the ceremony as well.

Anyways, take a look at all the pictures of our wedding here. Or just watch a slideshow of our wedding pictures.

Hawaiian Wedding Day 3

Published November 15th, 2008 in Photos, travel and wedding. 0 Comments

All pictures for this day are available here. NOTE: Pictures of the wedding ceremony will be uploaded as soon as we get them from the photographer.

Finally the big day arrived! The wedding was going to start at 9am, so all of us had to get up early to start getting ready. Yukari was the first one up, slightly before 5am. I was a bit groggy still, but got up at 5:30am to go buy some breakfast for her. Then I met everyone for breakfast at IHOP. After that it was my turn to get ready. I got my tuxedo on as Yukari finished up with her hair, makeup and dress. It was the first time for me to see her in the wedding dress, and she looked really beautiful!We went down to the lobby, where our limo was waiting for us. All of our family was already there, so they got to see what we looked like and take lots of pictures as we climbed into the limo and drove off to the chapel.

When we arrived at the chapel, everyone was already there, so they could get more pictures of us as we got out of the limo this time. We met the man that would be taking the video of everything, and started to get our pictures taken. We did a quick rehersal with me, Yukari, and her dad. It was mainly for pictures, so hopefully we got some nice pictures! After rehearsal was done, it was time to get ready and do the real wedding with everyone watching!

By this time I was a bit nervous, so my main goal was to not pee my pants… which was actually a difficult task to accomplish. Next task was to make sure I didn’t goof up. I think I goofed up the vows. All I had to do was repeat what the minister said, but I missed a few words at one time I think. In the end, the wedding was good and I think only my mom cried for a brief moment. I won’t talk too much about that, but if you want a copy of the DVD let me know and I can send one to you.After the ceremony was over, we had some cake and a toast with champagne. Then it was off for some more pictures. We have lots of pictures and a great video of this, so that can describe it more than words here. Let me just say that I think it was a great wedding and was so happy to have such a wedding with a beautiful bride!

After everyone went back to the hotel by limo, we got ready and went out for our reception lunch. We had a course lunch, with cake and some special things planned. Yukari made a book with information about everyone and messages that we got from friends and family. We also had a slideshow of pictures from when Yukari and I were growing up, up until this year. Yukari also made some nametags for the places to sit and it looked great. Plus we exchanged gifts… just take a look at all the pictures to see what I’m talking about!

After the reception, we took it easy for the rest of the day. We all went to Waikiki beach, and I stayed to swim with my dad as lark sat on the beach. Yukari and her family went out to a shopping center. Afterwards, we were going to go get some drinks, but Yukari was pretty tired from a long and stressful day (we still had more pictures to do the next day actually), so she went to bed early. Me, my dad and Lark went to an interesting bar near the hotel. The MaiTais were cheap during Happy Hour, so me and Lark enjoyed them. We also played a few games of darts (I won all of them ;)).

Our wedding was over, so it was a huge relief. The next day would be our beach photos, and after that it would be all freetime for us to enjoy whatever activities we had planned!

Hawaiian Wedding Day 2

Published November 13th, 2008 in travel. 0 Comments

All photos for Day 2 available here.

The original plan for the second day was to wake up early enough to climb Diamondhead and see the sunrise. Since Lark and Jim missed their flight on the first day, we decided to wait until Tuesday morning for that. So instead of getting up at 5am, I got up at 6:30am. I still had to pick up the rental car at 8am, and would have to take a bus to the place since Lark wasn’t there to drive me.After I got the car with my dad, we returned to the hotel where me and Yukari and her family got ready to leave for the outlet. In the lobby we ran into my dad and made some quick introductions since we were running to the outlet and my dad was running (walking 45 minutes is more like it) off to church. Since Lark wasn’t there with a second car, I had to take two trips to the outlet. Once with all of Yukari’s family, and then once with just my mom. Turned out I didn’t miss that much. Yukari’s family was in one store the whole time, so it worked out nicely. So, all 6 of us were finally at the outlet and I ended up buying some new shirts. My mom got one for my cousin as well. I forget what else we bought, wasn’t too much.

Then we grabbed some lunch, which turned out to be too much. The “mini” size was larger than most portions you get at places in Japan. After that, I went to get a prepaid cell phone. I found out the one that our travel agent got us, the word “free” was not quite accurate. The phone was free, but it was $1.25 a minute for every call. So I got a Virgin Mobile phone for $20 plus 200 minutes for another $20. It was cheaper this way if I was gonna to use the phone for like 36 minutes.Then off to the bookstore and KMart. We ended up hanging out in the area till after it was closed. Since we had more people than would fit in the car, we had to wait for Lark to arrive and come get us. Which she finally did. We loaded up into the 2 cars after she got there, and went off to the top of a small mountain/big hill. From there we could see all of Honolulu. The pictures we took don’t justify how nice of a view it was from up there.

For dinner, the 9 of us went to The Cheesecake Factory for dinner. Service was so-so, but I was able to get Lark a birthday sundae. The wedding was going to be in the morning the next day, and everyone was a bit tired so we called it an early night to end the second day.

Hawaiian Wedding Day 1

Published November 13th, 2008 in travel. 0 Comments

All Pictures for Day 1 here.

On the first day in Hawaii, we arrived slightly before 9am.

First thing was to take care of getting the details sorted out for our wedding. That ended up taking up most of the morning, so when we were done with that we just went out for lunch. After lunch we were able to check into our hotel room, but we didn’t stay there for long. We called up our limo and got dropped off at a shopping area to find some clothes and souveniers. I only got a few souveniers and then decided it was time to go back to the hotel and wait for my mom to come in.

Eventually my mom arrived, shortly followed by Yukari and her family. There was a bit of drama about Yukari’s wedding dress that we had to take care of before dinner. After that was done, we found a nearby restaurant that had some nice food for dinner. Over dinner we discussed our plans for the next day, which was going to be going out to the outlet shopping center and then see a few places before going out for dinner.

After dinner, everybody went back to the hotel to get some rest after a long day with not much sleep. I stayed up and waited for my dad to come in, which he did, around 9:30pm. All the restaurants were closed so we headed out to find anything edible. We ended up going to Gyu-Kaku, which I enjoy going to in Japan. The menu was almost the same as well, so it was kind of interesting seeing everything in English. Since I had dinner already, I just had some grilled veggies and a beer. By the time we went back to the hotel, I was ready for some shuteye.

Not too eventful of a day, but just enough to ease into getting ready for the wedding and seeing family.

Hawaiian Wedding

Published November 12th, 2008 in travel. 0 Comments

There haven’t been many updates recently because, as I said in the last post, we were going to be in Hawaii. So we went to Hawaii and had our wedding and a short honeymoon in Maui. I will be updating this blognlater with pictures and desscriptions of what we did, but first I have to clean some stuff up first.

Trip to California

Published October 26th, 2008 in Photos and travel. 0 Comments

I just got back from a business trip to Yahoo! in Sunnyvale, CA. I actually was there for two business trips put together, so I had a lot more free time than most of my co-workers. I arrived on Monday the 13th and spent the day in San Francisco. This was my first time in the San Francisco area, so I enjoyed going all over. Of course I did see the Golden Gate Bridge:

The next 3 days were spent in meetings at Yahoo!, and I was there for the release of YOS. Visiting Yahoo! sure made Yahoo! Japan look like nothing. Some of the nice things I noticed were:

Free coffee (my favorite was a soy chai)
Lots of extra activities (foosball, billiards, basketball, volleyball, fitness center)
Most people go home by 5pm
Subsidized lunches
A more open feel about the work enviornment

Well, enough about work talk. On Friday, I had the day off and went to play some poker in the afternoon. After about 2 hours, I was up nearly $600 and decided to call it a day. Then went to San Francisco to look around some more, finally saw some cable cars, and walked up the hill they went up to take some pictures. I went back to my hotel room to get ready for Saturday, I would go visit a redwood park for hiking, then go hiking along the sheer cliffs over the ocean, and visit Monterey.

I did spend 5 more days after that, but they weren’t as eventful. Just check out all the pictures to see what I was up to.

After getting back, I’ll be here in Japan for 1 week. And then on Saturday, we are off to go to Hawaii for our wedding! So, check back then, I’m sure we will take tons of pictures.

Dinner in Roppongi

Published August 31st, 2008 in Photos. 0 Comments

Since I work in Roppongi, we usually don’t go there much at night, but we wanted to see a new movie called 20th Century Boys. So we went to the movie theater and saw the movie. It was good and Yukari liked it too! I read the manga earlier this year, so I already know the story but it is fun to watch as a real movie (not animated). Plus, I have already forgotten some parts of it.

So after the movie was over, we headed out to a restraunt. Back in April, I won the super star award at work. Turned out to not be much of a big deal.. I ended up with a 5,000 yen ($50?) certificate to use at a restraunt in Roppongi Hills. So, we decided to finally use it and went to a restraunt called Xen. They had lots of types of food, but we were mainly interested in the sushi. In addition to the normal sushi, they had special rolls. Most of these were initially from America I believe. But we have never tried them, so we gave them a try and they were pretty good! Take a look at the pictures we have at Flickr. Feel free to write a comment as well!

New Server

Published August 26th, 2008 in General News. 0 Comments

My server was having some issues, so for the time being I have moved my site to a rental server provided by Slicehost. So, what that means is that the pictures will no longer be directly on my site. Instead, I will be using my Flickr account. I’m in the process of moving all the pictures, sets, descriptions, etc to Flickr, so it should be done by this weekend.

Anyways, that and getting ready for the wedding in Hawaii is what I have been up to recently. So nothing too interesting to post about. So, check back in a few days and maybe I’ll be done with getting my stuff up to Flickr (there are over 5,500 pictures at the moment), plus some new ones that Yukari has been taking!