Saturday 18/7:
It was a hot summer Saturday in Japan, and finally time for me to experience a real Japanese hanabi, or firework festival. I had been really looking forward to this, since I would get to use my new yukat. I hadn’t had any luck in putting it one by my self, so today Kojiro’s mom was gone help me out.
But before nightfall Kojiro and me had a whole day to kill together as it was dating time again. As mentioned before, driving around is a dating thing over here, so I was picked up by car in front of my dormitory around lunch. Kojiro had already dressed up in his hanabi clothes, the jinbe, and was super cool looking : P
I know I have already talked a little bit about kimono, yukata, and hakama, but there is more you see. There seem to be no end to the variety of Japanese traditional clothes. The yukata for example comes in the pyjamas version and the hanabi-watching version. For the hanabi-watching version the girl version comes in countless colours, patterns and ways of tying the obi (sash). The guy’s version has fewer colours and patterns to choose from, mostly grey and blue, stripes and other geometric patterns. The obi (or is it called kaku?) is not so wide, and tied longer down on the torso, not using a bow of course.
Unlike the women the men can choose to wear a jinbe at hanabi watching instead of the troublesome yukata. A jinbe has short pants, no obi, and is loos fitting. It kind of look like a pyjamas, and can actually be used as one also. Here is a picture.
Anyway, we spent the afternoon seeing places from Kojiro’s upbringing. First I got to see his high school, witch was pretty interesting, especially since I watch anime. A lot of anime shows is sett at high school and it felt a lot alike. The shoe lockers are a difference from Norwegian schools, and so is the swimming pool. All Japanese high school have their own swimming pool I was told, which is pretty amazing. We don’t have that in Norway, but I guess the weather can take part of the fault for that.
After that we ate lunch at a pretty nice looking but not expensive kani (crab) place. Here is Kojiro looking hungry at my teishoku. This is also a special Japanese thing I might not have mentioned before but when you eat in Japanese restaurants the food is brought out whenever it is done. Not like in Norway, where everyone’s dishes are brought out at the same time.
Afterwards we went to see Kojiro’s childhood playground. I was surprised to find such a secluded, green and pretty looking place, just in walking distance from his house. So fare I hade lived with the impression that Tokyo is nothing but grey houses as fare as eye can see, spotted with a few small playground parks for children here and there. This was an actual forest, with small rivers, shrines and fields. It seemed a nice place to play for kids, and we saw many of them fishing for frogs and planting sunflowers by a watermill, pretty idyllic.
Praying at the shrine
Rice fields and forest
Our last stop before going back for yukata dressing was a Japanese sweets restaurant located inn the forest by the rice fields. Here we had green tea, and dango, a Japanese sweet made from rice flour.
It had been a wonderful afternoon, and more was to come ^^ In next post that is :P
