O-medeto gozaimasu!

It was a day to celebrate! After an uneventful morning (Betsy attended the final portion of a continuing education course at the hospital), we spent a lovely afternoon with our good friends the Wheelers. We reminded them what it's like to have an oven in which to bake brownies. In our contest of boxed mix vs recipe "from scratch," we are too stubborn to concede the victory to the mix (we reason that probable overcooking dried out the from-scratch batch). So we had to munch on quite a few & pair them with some American ice cream. Meanwhile, the Wheelers reminded us that we do live in Japan by teaching us how to carve our stamp blocks using fancy tools & erasers. They, of course, assisted with the relevant Kanji & Katakana for our names, but we were very successful at producing functional products. They also taught us the secrets of Sino-Japanese calligraphy (well, Betsy actually learned; Josh not so much really), before we presented the couple with a small token of our affection on the occasion of first wedding anniversary (1 day early). As subsequent celebration for Josh's achievement of 30-something (yes, his age has gone from 2 syllables to 3), the very generous Wheelers treated us to a delightful dinner in the Omoromachi area of Naha at a very nice Japanese restaurant. They wisely recommended that we each order the 6-course set meal, and indeed, each dish was excellent! The grand surprise of the evening was a delicious dessert topped with 7 candles (making me feel not quite so old) that Josh promptly extinguished before the sweets could be damaged. Having been alerted to the possibility, patrons at an adjacent table received their own dessert shortly thereafter to celebrate their own occasion so we happily joined in the birthday chorus (in English). It was a fun & memorable day of happy celebrations.

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*The title of this post means "Congratulations!" in Japanese.