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Rina and Eric met like most kids these days: online. They emailed back and forth for several weeks, sometimes multiple times a day, till the wee hours of the night. "When is this guy gonna ask me out???" Rina would say to her friends. Unbeknownst to Rina, Eric was really just delaying for time in hopes to find a cool unusual venue to invite her to as a first date. A delighted Eric and an anxious Rina met for the time at Samovar, a tea lounge Eric suggested in San Francisco's Castro district.
The evening flowed wonderfully and very naturally. They shared funny stories all the way till Samovar's closing time, which was a relatively early 10pm. Things were going so well that they decided to continue the evening at an adorable watering hole called Twin Peaks. There they comfortably lounged on piles of pillows, continued their conversation, and eventually kissed when neither could resist one another. That was how it all began.
That very weekend, Eric was (accidentally) introduced to Rina's parents and took Rina and Rina's sister Ellen out to a concert. Every week had a new surprise: hiking trips to the oyster shacks, various trips to meet Rina's family around Elk Grove and San Diego, and a long awaited trip with Mom & Dad Sasaki to root Rina on at the Boston Marathon. From Boston, the four went on to New York City where Eric's mother, after a long 12-hour train ride, met us. Little did they know that by the end of the week, they would all become future in-laws. On the last night we all went to dinner at "Alouette", a wonderful French bistro in the Upper West Side of New York City. It is there that Eric popped the question and asked: "Mom & Dad Sasaki, would you do me the honor of becoming my Otosan and okasan?" (Mom and Dad, Japanese). The same was asked to Eric's mother, who couldn't contain her joy and completely lost all usage of the few English words she knew.
Since then, the couple took a glorious 16-day "early honeymoon" to Spain and Morocco. It was a true test of their love as they're now sure that they can happily spend extended periods of time with each other scouring foreign lands, getting lost in mazes of "souqs" while harassed constantly by street vendors , and taking care of one another when faced with a nasty (and explosive) bout of food poisoning.
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