Labor Day, 15 years ago….

Happy Labor Day! It may not feel like fall yet, though. It’s been an extremely hot and muggy summer in Japan. Thankful that Typhoon No. 10 (Shanshan) has just been downgraded to a tropical cyclone and didn’t hit us directly, but sadly it affected many residents and tourists….

Labor Day weekend is a special weekend for my husband and me - it’s the weekend we met in New York City, back in 2009. We met at our mutual friend’s apartment where she had a backyard party (here is a Japanese post (「マッチメーカー」) about how we met. )

I was invited but was so tired (I was a workaholic, working like 16-hours a day) that I was leaning towards skipping the party initially. Life is wonderfully strange. Somehow I decided to go in the last minute and, voila! There was my future husband, making burger patties (real yummy ones.)

Learned later, that the party host had felt my husband and I were a good match and she had tried to matchmake us a few times before. To make it funnier, we both kept telling her “No thanks.”

Have you had this magical experience that things go so smoothly you have to believe it was a ‘fate’? This definitely was one. Back then, I was so happy just as I was, and couldn’t even imagine myself dating anyone. In fact, I warned him that we shouldn’t date because I didn’t think he would be happy with a woman who is so used to being single and spending time just for herself.

Luckily for me, he didn’t give up and we were living together three months later. A surprise proposal in Times Square（「ニューヨーク、夢の街（11.11.11の出来事）」）and lovely Hawaiian wedding surrounded by our best friends followed, and here we are, having a wonderful life together with a beautiful son.

So…. Millions of thanks to my husband and Happy Anniversary!