Kimono day

On Saturday there was a special orchestral concert that was free for those people who wore kimono. My host sister invited me to go, so I dressed up in kimono and hakama, those long pleated pant-like-things that I tried at Meiji Village several months ago. I had bought a pair of my own in the meantime as well as a kimono to go with it, and I was pretty excited to have a chance to wear them. The weather was beautiful, which was very nice touch, and though the concert bit was short it was nice to see the very lovely concert hall filled completely with people in different kimono. I was the only foreigner and one of the only people in hakama. The other event that was going on after the concert itself was the choosing of that year’s ‘kimono queen’ from among contestants from the entire length of Japan. They all stood up on stage in their long-sleeved kimono with their hair all done-up, and I was struck by how the all managed to look alike even in one-of-a-kind, beautiful kimono. They all had basically the same hairstyle except for one girl whose hair was in a traditional Japanese style, which I rather liked. We decided that this was not very interesting, and so my host sister and I went over to the neighbouring botanical gardens, which were also very beautiful. We strolled through the plum orchard, along a large planting of daffodils, and then into the greenhouse, which had a large variety of plants, including some of the only truly blue flowers that I’ve ever seen. Not long after returning home I was back out again, still in my kimono, to meet up with another friend of mine who had tickets to see the garden of a temple near to Gion that was going to be lit-up. Once we figured out how to turn in our reservation in exchange for actual tickets, the garden was very beautiful; whoever designed the lighting really knew what they were doing. After leaving the temple, we walked around Maruyama park, which is behind Yasaka Shrine, where they had a number of large Ikebana flower arrangements and sculptures similarly lit up. There were a number of very pretty arrangements, but I was amused by the sheer novelty of the sculpture made of slices of daikon radish. Continuing onto the grounds of the shrine itself we met with the food stands that one usually finds at these sorts of festivals, though sadly there was no okonomiyaki, which is probably my favourite savoury festival food. I settled on something that I translated for the store owner as a pork omelette, which was pretty good. There was pretty much nowhere to sit, but we perched on some convenient rocks and shared the orange juice that my friend’s host mother had packed for him. While we were still eating I got a text message from some of our other friends inviting us to go do karaoke nearby, so that was our next stop. The entire walk there I had different people staring at me. One drunk guy even turned away from the maiko that he was standing by next to in order to try and engage me in conversation. Karaoke was a lot of fun, but before long it was time for me to head back home, which is always a bit of a trick, but I managed to find a bus that was still running. On the way to the bus stop I had another (probably also drunk) guy call me a samurai, which does make me wonder if I’m walking with too heavy a stride.
-Twice a year, I believe, there is a weekend where, if you’re wearing kimono, you can use coupons to ride the subway and gain entrance to various places in Kyoto for free. I didn’t pay for transportation even once.
-I received a lot of compliments, as seems to happen a lot, from older women and their husbands. If I was half as popular with the younger people of Kyoto as I am with their grandparents I’d never have to pay for dinner again.
-I really didn’t get any work done this break, but I think that I’m okay with that.