Birthday Gift

It's my birthday. Am I happy? Yes, I should be... But I don't like to get older. Some of my friends say I've got wiser, so I should be happy.

Well, I got birthday cards from America and Germany. I also many Happy Birthday messages from many of my friends. All of their messages made my birthday special.

My family celebrated my birthday on Sunday, two days earlier, because I have my annual check-up tomorrow and I can't eat food after 8:00.

You've already known it, but I got a new bike as my birthday gift from my husband. My daughter gave me a nice bag and I like it so much.

My friend from U.S. sent me a nice pendant, so it's very special too.

Well, on this birthday, I had another nice gift from a couple. It's not a material, but it's a nice story.

I'll talk about their love story now. It's not a drama, it's a true story and the story is still going on.

I met an Australian on a website which is called "Hungryforword friend". I suppose some of you are aware of the site. I started to exchang e-mail in autumn 2008. Around the time, he had another Japanese e-mail friend in Kyoto. He is retired navy, three daughters, but divorced. He told me that he had met a Japanese girl in Nagasaki when his ship came to Japan. It was nearly 40 years ago. He was 20 and she was 18. They liked each other and they exchanged letters after he went back to Australia. Of course, there was no e-mail.
They corresponded each other several times, but the girl stopped writing to him. After that, he had a chance to come to Japan a couple of times, but he couldn't find her.

Some years later, both of them married, man married to the lady from Fiji, and she got married Japanese.

Well, as he liked her so much and he'd always thought about her in his life, even after he got married, he wanted to find her again. I don't know if the God wanted them to meet, but the lady whom he started to exchange e-mail was on a trip to Nagasaki where her daughter lived. So he asked her if she would find the girl in Nagasaki. He told the old address he had kept 38 years.

Yes, the lady in Kyoto found her and got a phone number. She also got divorced after short marriage and came back to Nagasaki to take care of her mother.

He was sooooooooooooooooo happy. Unfortunately, the lady in Kyoto didn't want to exchange e-mail with him any more, so it was a pity.

As he couldn't speak Japanese and she couldn't speak English, I'd started to translate their letters. She doesn't use the computer, so they started to write a letter to each other again, it was just the same as 38 years ago.

You know, I could read their love letters. lol She is slightly older than me. He always wrote to her that he loved her so much. But as she was Japanese, she was embarrassed to tell him, and didn't want to express her mind.
I told her on the phone that we could fall in love with someone at any time, at any age. I encouraged her.
I knew she loved him so much too.

After a while, he sent her Japanese letter which he scanned to me and asked me translate it into English.

YES, I found a line. "At my age, I'm embarrassed to say it, but I love you so much, I've loved you so much"

As she is taking care of her old mother and he isn't healthy enough to travel to Japan, they haven't had a chance to see each other yet. And they'd never heard their voice each other either.
But she called me at 10:30 in the evening just before my birthday, she called me that she got a phone call from Australia and could talk to him. She said she didn't understand his English well, but they both told "I LOVE YOU" many times. Her happy voice made me soooooooooooooooo happy.

It became a nice birthday gift to me.

Suppose I made a lot of mistakes, but it's a long story. I just want to share my happiness with you.