Celebrating 20 Years Married

In June of 2003 Ruth and I said “I do” to one another in marriage and a new family began! Last year we realized that our 20 years anniversary was coming up, and we wanted to do something special — something out of the ordinary. Something that we’d long remember and was worthy of the 20th anniversary. Every other year for our anniversary, we’d normally celebrate by going out to dinner somewhere, but this time we knew what we wanted to do: a big trip with no kids!

We began to look into an Alaskan cruise, and the options got us excited. We’ve both dreamed of doing a cruise (neither one of us have done them) and Alaska isn’t so far from us here in Japan. But the prices of going on a cruise, especially the airfare from Japan, was crazy high! So much so, we soon thought of another option — what if we explored more of Asia? The result was one of the most unforgettable trips we’ve ever done — and at half the price it would have cost us to do an Alaskan cruise, this was a great way to do it!

Now while this doesn’t directly have to do with life in Japan, it does have everything to do with how you vacation internationally when you live in Japan! In fact this one trip really opened our eyes to all the exciting possibilities of living in Japan, not just within the country but also because of what is relatively close to Japan and yet a world away.

We’re so thankful we could celebrate in such a memorable way. How important it is to celebrate the big milestones in life and not minimize the importance of the people closest to you, that God has given you. In fact the celebration also made us look forward to getting back to the kids, and we had a special reunion when the trip was all said and done.