Maiko Time

My dad came into Kyoto the night of the 30th, but since my mom was leaving the following morning at some ungodly hour we didn’t have much of an overlap between everyone’s vacations. My sister and I had our appointment with the Maiko studio on the morning of the 31st, so while Dad entertained himself walking around the Gion district we got dressed up. The first thing that they did was have us change into lightweight shifts and tabi (split-toed socks), and then while I was choosing a kimono from their collection (I had to choose one of the longer ones because I’m taller than their average customer) my sister had her hair tied back in a net and her makeup done. It seemed that after washing our faces, the makeup person rubbed pink makeup onto our cheekbones and the sides of our noses, then painted us in white makeup, starting with the back of the neck down over the shoulders and then the face including the lips. This was all then powdered lightly in pink blush again where she had put the pink makeup before, then black was used on the eyebrows and to line the eyes, and then red on the lips (drawn smaller than our actual ones) and the corners of the eyes. When the makeup was done, we were dressed in our kimono of choice, starting with an under-robe with a stiff kimono collar but no sleeves, a sort of tight wraparound skirt with red on it, with a patterned red collar (chosen by our dresser) layered on top of the under-robe collar covering it completely. Next was the kimono itself (Mine was blue with a pattern of cranes and feathers, while my sister’s was dark green with gold-accented phoenixes and flowers), which was tied on tightly and then topped with a stiff plastic piece, and the obi, which was in two parts. Last were more sashes (obiage), a cord with a large broach (obiage and obidome), and the wig itself complete with hair accessories (kanzashi). Once we were all dressed up in this way it was a little difficult to move, but while we had our pictures taken in the studio the photo guy helped us. After the studio, we stepped into our tall wooden sandals (okobo) for a walk around Gion, where we attracted quite a lot of attention. Maybe if we had been Japanese (or at least Asian) some tourists would have thought that we were actual Maiko, but since my sister and I are both clearly not, I thought that we would just take our walk without incident. I don’t know how many people wound up taking our picture, or how many of them posed with us, but it was a considerable number, enough that my Dad didn’t see me wave down my host mother and host sister (whom I had text messaged earlier so that they would know when to stop by). My host family has a picture of my family, so they knew my Dad immediately by sight, but Dad was a little surprised when my host sister ran up and hugged him by way of saying ‘hello.’ It was a little sad when it was finally time to change back into our real clothes, but it was also nice to be able to walk with a free stride and breath deeply again. It wasn’t cheap to do, but it was so much fun and we took tons of great pictures, it was like being a celebrity for an hour or so! After this we walked around a bit more, had some lunch, did some shopping, and picked up some sushi from a takeout place near my house and some cake from my favourite bakery and ate it in the hotel room. When I got back to my host family’s house I watched the end of the red and white competition on television and listened to the temple bells tolling to welcome the New Year.
-A real maiko’s kimono has a one-piece under-robe as well as a one-piece extra long and extra wide obi, but these are not very practical for dressing up tourists in. While we chose our own kimono, the shop woman chose everything else including our wigs, which is how my sister ended up with pink flowers on her head.
-Since the shoes are smaller at the bottom than they are at the top, they’re a little challenging to walk in. In addition, I’m already taller than most of the women in the country, but with over 5 inches of shoe under me and several more of wig over me I positively tower.
-Every year NHK (I believe) hosts a ‘red and white’ competition, which is basically a big televised show where the preceding year’s top female singers (the red team) ‘compete’ against the top male singers (the white team) to see who’s better. I don’t know how they decide the winner, but this year it was the white team.