Karaoke in Kimono

Friday was the big AKP New Year’s Party, for which I had had my outfit planned for weeks: a furisode kimono (one where the sleeves fall down to below waist-level when the arms are extended at shoulder height) that was cream with red and gold chrysanthemums and peonies, a green obi decorated with fans and gold, purple, orange and white flowers that my host family had bought for me, and a hair ornament with red and cream flowers made of folded silk. I had also bought a book full of complicated obi knots and chosen which one I wanted, which my host mother and my host mother’s sister helped me to implement. I finished it all off with a magenta kimono coat and headed off to the Kyoto Tower Hotel, where we had all stayed our first week in Japan. They had a lot of very tasty food at the party, and a lot of people performed things that they had worked on all semester, including groups doing koto, shamisen, taiko and shakuhachi (traditional Japanese instruments), Hula, and my own traditional Japanese dance class. It was a lot of fun, and afterward (just as I was about ready to return home, actually) some friends invited me to karaoke. So, still in my kimono as I didn’t have any other clothes with me, I joined them in a rousing night of singing everything from the Beatles to my own Takarazuka solo. We were out really late, though, and I ended up riding the last train home at about midnight.
-People still seem to be baffled by the concept of a foreigner in kimono.
-My friend stopped a couple of well-dressed men on the street to ask if they were hosts. They said ‘no’, but we were not convinced, maybe they were off-duty and didn’t want to admit it?
-Make sure you know when the last train is.
-If an entry into the karaoke machine doesn’t take right away, just try again.