KIMONO and some 明石外国人新年会

11 JAN
Today's 成人式, the Japanese's coming-of-age celebration day and therefore  HOLIDAY~. All girls who have turn 20years old in 2009 can go to the celebration thingy. I didn't go. 
We're having a physics and maths exam this coming wed btw. Its an exam all 3rd year students studying in technology colleges have to take. They use this exam's result to rank the technology colleges in Japan. And I finally found out why Akashi always had a high rank - our maths and physics teacher are treating this exam as semester exam. G,O,D i just found out about it today |||. Spent the whole day in my classroom with 3 other guys 'studying'.. more like just talking >< (all 通生- students who don't live in dorm and travel back and forth to sch from their home).
I'm so glad there's finally a couple of them that got used to me and who I can feel at total ease with. and anyway....

10 JANUARY 2010

okay! Story time. Let's see...this kimono is actually Yumi's one. Yumi's the nearby chapel's priest's daughter. I sometimes hang out there when I have free time on my hands. They borrowed us kimono to wear for the coming-of-age prayer thingy.

And FYI, I did try my best to smile in my kimono but then I was told that I looked better off not smiling so.... まあ．．．I was getting bored of seeing myself smiling in photos anyway. I wonder who's the one that started the idea that we are to smile when we take pictures anyway.

Oya, its not easy to wear kimono. Most Japanese can't wear it by themselves and they usually go to the saloon where the saloon people would help them wear the kimono, do their make and hair which, by the way, takes about 3 hours... or so they say. Since we weren't going to a formal function, this two aunties help us wore ours. They don't really have much experience in wearing kimono either but they're so cute ^^! When I arrived in the changing room, there's like 5 pieces of paper with handwritten instructions on how to wear kimono stuck on the wall! haha, they really did their homework.

I really have to applaud them. They just read the instructions and managed to tie this obi thingy. I have my own kimono outfit plus hair done within like... less than 30 ninutes? By the time we got to the hair, we were pressed for time already cause the it was time for the sermon already so the hair part was done under 5 minutes by another er... aunty? (not really that old till call aunty... but not young enough to call her a lady... er.. errr... ahhh! middle-aged woman!).. Okay!.. Aother middle-aged lady who frequent the church did my hair for me. Mind you she's an amateur but she did a good job. I just had my hair tied into a high bun then had a small brunch of curly wig pinned there and add the flower -voila~!

The flower is mine to keep. The church gave me and zi each one that matches the kimono we were going to wear as a gift ^^. ,,though I'm not really sure there's gonna be any occasion where it would come to use again.

Personally I like this pic of me. The stomach part looks slightly weird at first but once you look long enough XD and get used to it, this pic kinda looks like a doll (*^^*)

Really love the kimono colour... oya.. it costed 50万円 = rm20 000. Crazy right? Its counted as typical for a kimono though . Of course, there's cheaper ones than this and there's much more expensive ones.

The kimono underwear. I didn't have the chance to take photos while we changing into them earlier cause we didn't have much time so this is taken when I was changing out of it. I would have preferred to stay a wee bit longer and take more photos but then we already promised to go to the akashi foreigners new year party thingy so....

Foreigners and japanese (mostly housewives btw) living in akashi area are invited to join.

me with the food chitto (laos guy) cooked

some of the snacks... The party was a lot more interesting than I expected it to be and I won a octopus (akashi's famous for octopus) hp strap thing in the lottery game thingy, which I'll take photo of and post next time.
The party... really had the foreigners feel. The clothes the people wear are just different from the Japanese. Hmm.. don't really have much stuff I wanna say about this party thingy so.... till next time!