Wedding chapels

Hi
I just returned home from a nice trip to Japan. One city we visited was Kokura (Kitakyushu). When I drove around I noticed a –for Japan- odd building. It was a copy of the famous Venice tower and cathedral. Not knowing what is was I explored the building (nobody stopped me). It was a wedding facility with a very nice chapel (or cathedral as they labeled it). Worth visiting. But of course it is not meant to be tourist attraction. Maybe they should reconsider this ;-)

However one of the things I noticed in this Italian copy was that the text on the three-dimensional paintings on the side (Stations of the Cross) were in Dutch. I tried to ask this question in the facilities but nobody understood me: (English or were I was talking about). Anybody any idea why this was in Dutch (I do not know if it is also Dutch in the original San Marco cathedral in Venice)?

Through this experience I tried to visit some more wedding facilities. Sometimes they did not allow me to have a look but sometimes they were very friendly and escorted me through the facilities to take a look around. The wedding in chapels in Japan seems a to be quite a big activity. The chapel in Kokura was so far the nicest I discovered.

Here you can see the site of the wedding organization with some pictures: http://www.sanmarco-moji.com/photo_gallery.html

B. Slager

My friend and I had a weird experience a few years ago in Kobe. We noticed a strange looking building and went in. We opened the double door at the end of the entrance hall and entered a somewhat dimly lit big room with lots of flowers.

Right on the far wall there was what looked like life size statues of men and women, lined up on 3 steps, and holding some sheets of paper in their hands .
We thought they were wax statues, as in Madame Tussaud, when---to our shock--one of them moved and asked in Japanese (my friend is Japanese) what we were doing there....then we noticed all the other statues were moving slightly...

They were a choir rehearsing hymns and songs for a big funeral... OOPS!!!!