Paul Braevanov's love of Japan.

Paul is a student at VLLC - learning Japanese so that he and his wife can return to Japan and renew their vows with meaning. 

'My wife and I both love Japan, we love the beauty, culture and history of Japan. We organised a holiday to Japan and leading up to the trip we got engaged, we thought why not share this experience in this beautiful setting. We got married at the Kamigamo shrine in Kyoto. We got to wear traditional attire for the ceremony, My wife's kimono was so delicate and treasured that she had to have a personal assistant to constantly adjust the dress and help her with any actions that she couldn't perform being restrained in the outfit.

The ceremony itself was conducted in both Japanese and English by the Shinto priest, as per tradition both families drank sake together and my wife and I went up to the shrine and I spoke out our vows, in English and then we made the branch offering and asked for blessings for a happy family.

My vision is to learn Japanese with VLLC and go back to Japan, experience Japan with a new perspective and be able to interact on a whole new level, revisit the Kamigamo shrine and repeat the ceremony all in Japanese.