The Months Before the Wedding!
The big news in Nakamichi-cho and Toyotomi-mura at
the end of December and the beginning of January was the marriage of Joseph Adams and
Aoyagi Sayuri. After graduating from the University of Hawaii with an M.A. in History,
Joe went to teach to Japan to teach under the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET). That's
where he met Sayuri, a teacher at Nakamichi-Minami, one of the primary schools in
Nakamichi-cho. Joe began to fall in love with her watching her teach. Joe and Sayuri
team taught first, second and sixth grade classes and traveled together to America last
summer in the on-line Appalachian Adventure. This fall, Sayuri's mother finally pushed
the two to get married. 
After all, they are both over thirty years old and its high time to start a
family! But Sayuri's 90 year-old grandmother was not so keen to the idea at first.
She exclaimed to her granddaughter, "With all the men in this country, why did you
have to marry an American!?" Two weeks later, she told Joe that Sayuri's father
and grandfather would be very happy and anyone who thinks differently is old fashioned!
Joe and Sayuri say that they will make a good team and will continue work together on education-related projects. Joe has the ideas and Sayuri has the power to make Joe follow-through with them. She says that working alone, Joe wouldn't get ANYTHING done!
The main worry on Sayuri's mind is getting the well dug and bathroom put in the cabin in Georgia. Sayuri was only in Georgia for a week last summer, but she couldn't get used to toting water and using an outhouse.
The image below is a wedding invitation sent to friends and family in America. The picture is from the trip last summer. It is Amicalola falls, about fifteen minutes by car from Joe's home in Lumpkin County Georgia. From here the Appalachian trail begins and continues all the way to the state of Maine!
"Ring Them Bells," the opening lines of the
invitation
come from the song of the same title by Bob Dylan.
