21 November 2005

Kimono Day #2

There is a new, young, (unfortunately) temporary teacher at my school called Migiwa Sensei. She doesn't speak much English but Mayumi and I have hung out with her and, thanks to Mayumi's translating skills, things are going pretty well. She gave us a Japanese cooking lesson last week and then she decided to share her kimonos with us. (She is only 28 but recently divorced because she married the oldest son who traditionally has to live with his parents -- evidently the mother-in-law was so awful she couldn't live there anymore. Plus, Migiwa wanted to continue teaching, but her husband wanted her to stay at home. I don't know why she didn't know these things before she married him, but I think it's quite unusual for a Japanese woman to get divorced, so young, for such "modern" reasons. But I have to save that for another discussion.)

Anyway. Because of her brief alliance with this very traditional family, she learned a lot of traditional Japanese arts: how to cook, how to knit, how to wear a kimono. She offered to teach Mayumi and me, and we gladly accepted. So next year, right after New Year's, she'll dress us in her (silk!!) kimonos, and we'll go pray at a shrine, and then have tea in a garden. This is all worth mentioning because: the time we chose to get dressed was very important. Because kimonos are tied so tightly around your waist, we had to carefully coordinate an eating, meeting, and dressing schedule, to give our stomachs ample time to shrink back down to acceptable, traditional, Japanese women-sized stomachs that will stay obediently contained by silk kimono sashes. The scene was just really interesting to me: three 20-something women discussing when and how much to eat so they can properly fit into a centuries-old style of dress. And agreeing on what time we would simultaneously, but independently, eat lunch was the most important and difficult part of the planning.

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