She said YES!!!!

On Saturday March 10th i got down on one knee in front of a rather large group of friends, presented a diamond ring to my girlfriend, Ulala, and asked if she would do me the honor of being my wife. And she said "YES!" WOOHOO! That`s right! We`re engaged! We haven`t set a date yet but it will likely be at least a year since we have plans to travel quite a bit first and also her brother is plannning to be married in spring 2008 so we don`t want the weddings to be too close together for the sake of money and stress. I have sent out mass e-mails and received lots of wonderful replies. If any of you read this who replied please know that i am grateful for your good wishes and congratulations! Unfortunately there are 73 messages in my inbox so i will be slow about answering all of them! oy.

I have been super busy trying to plan, arrange and carry out this proposal and the surprise birthday party for her (at which i proposed) as well as go ring shopping, plan an upcoming trip to New Zealand and work overtime (to pay for all these things) so please excuse the lack of entries over the last little while. i have yet to post pictures from Scooter`s visit to Japan but you can see some at his DJ Bolivvia site. i will post my own pics when i get around to it. i suppose i could have done it last night but am also a little emarrassed to say that i am a full-blown Sudoku addict and there was this puzzle that i just couldn`t figure out. Eventually i did and then went to bed. =)

So... let me just quickly tell you the story of how i proposed: I had planned a surprise birthday party for Saturday night at Zerro (a very nice bar here in Osaka run by friends of Ulala and i) and had sent out the word to be forwarded on via word of mouth. Thank you very much to Matt and Emi for helping with the arrangements and the invitations. Then i only told a select few people that i was also planning to propose that night at the party. That way the proposal would be a surprise to most of the guests too. THEN on Friday my Japanese teacher, Miyamoto Kayoko Sensei, helped me choose the ring and arrange to have it sized (i snuck out one of Ulala`s rings i thought waas maybe around the right size).
On Saturday morning i made her French toast for breakfast and left a card explaining that her birthday surprise was in five parts and that this was part one. Then i secretely took my records (since i would be DJing at the party but i didn`t want to tip off Ulala by carrying them with me in the evening) and put them in a locker. Then it was off to work where i tried to concentrate as best i could all day. After work it was off to the jewellery store where i picked up the ring, then picked up my records from the locker and dropped then at Zerro and checked on how preparations were going. Anthony had hung a couple Happy Birthday banners and also had a cake ready, made by the Zerro chef,Kousuke (amazing since Kousuke was also having his birthday on the weekend but was still kind enough to make a cake before he took off to Tokyo for the weekend!). Then it was off to meet Ulala in Umeda at 7:30. She was late. I was already nervous that we wouldn`t have time to have a relaxed birthday dinner since i had told everyone that the Surprise would happen at Zerro at 10pm. This did not help my stress level! But we had time. She showed up, looking amazing (i had told her to dress really nicely because we would be having a fancy dinner), and we headed to La Fleuve for dinner on the 19th floor above the Hotel Granvia in Osaka. I`ll have to post a whole seperate entry about our dinner bacause it was incredible. Very fancy in th whole Art-on-a-plate tradition of fine French cuisine. At dinner i gave her part three (part two being dinner itself), which was a hnadmade book of photos of her and i over the last three and a half years or so of our relationship. Photos from from most of our trips together and from Luminarie (our second date) and all kinds of cheezy but hopefully sweet goodness. She asked what we were doing after dinner and i said that we were meeting Tony (our close friend) for a quick drink since i promised that he could buy her a birthday shot. She said ok and we headed to Zerro. All part of the plan since this gavce me an excuse to call Tony and say that we were "almost there" as we were approaching Zerro. Then we walked up to the door and everyone yelled surprise and sang happy brithday and she was really surprised! So that was part four. I gave her a few minutes to go aournd tha troom and say hi to people and thank them for coming and to calm down a bit. Then i said it was cake time so i made her sit in a chair on a raised part of the dance floor and we brought out the cake and sang Happy Birthday one more time (i could barely sing i was so nervous!) and then she blew out the candles. THEN i took the mic and asked everyone to bear with me, i had just one more surprise. I got the ring box out of my pocket and got down on one knee and asked into the microphone in both Japanese and English with my voice trembling if she would do me the honour of becoming my wife. She took the ring ring out of the box! She looked at it! Tony joked that she was totally checking out the ring first. and then... She said YES! Then i reported it through the mic and everyone applauded and i took the ring from her and slid it onto her finger and we kissed. *sigh* it was wonderful... I was told a few minutes later that i had accidentally put the ring on the wrong hand!! So i quickly switched it to the correct hand. I wonder what that means for our relationship? Hehehe. Then we had champagne and people bought lots of tequila shots. Why they wanted to punish the happy couple i`m not sure... =)

On that note here I`ll sign off with the promise that as soon as people send me pictures from that night (i didn`t take too many myself since i was rather busy!) i will post them. i think Brad Crawford got a really nice picture of me actually putting the ring on Ulala`s finger! nice!