Furisode (振袖)

Furi-sode (振袖) is the prime ceremonial cloth for unmarried women among kimonos. Furi (振) means 'swing' and sode (袖) means 'sleeves.' So Furisode has longer sleeves than the other kimonos.

Parents of Japanese girls used to make a set of Furisode for their daughters when girls became 20 years old. And the girls wore it for coming-of-age ceremonies. Now not so many parents do that. Some wear western dresses, and some rent Furisode from shops.

But I LOVE 振袖♡

I can only wear it when I'm single! (Well, physically I can wear Furisode after I get married, but it's strange.) So my sister & I wore it for our cousin's wedding party♬

My parets got these Furisodes made for our coming-of-age ceremonies. They are same cloth in different colours.



They look unpatterned, but actually they got white dots(ﾟ∇^*)! A fabric-dyeing artist sprinkled with wax before dyeing. After that, he washed the cloth, then un-dyed spots remain white.


The back of Obi belt (帯) can be tied in may shapes.




Can you see that the shapes of my sister's and my Obis are different? It's like Origami. We asked a professional kimono dresser to get us dressed.



She had such a wonderful technique, and made those shapes so quickly♥ I want to wear Furisode by myself, but you'd see it's not so easy! I don't think I can make those shapes on my back(＞▽＜；

Night view of Cherry blossoms （夜桜）

We Japanese love watching cherry flowers at night.
It's called 夜桜 viewing.

夜桜 literally means night (夜) cherry flowers (桜).

Here are the real 夜桜 photos. ;)







Sorry they are not good ones.
It's very difficult to take nice photos of 夜桜!

Anyway, we Japanese love going to see cherry flowers at night. And many of us bring food and drinks to enjoy them under the cherry trees. So if you visit parks famous for 桜 during the cherry season, you may see some people go crazy drinking too much beer.

But seeing real cherry flowers is not only way to enjoy 桜. I take a tea ceremony lesson every week, and my teacher prepares special sweets for us. Those sweets express flowers or sceneries of the season. This week, they were cherry flowers!



Aren't they beautiful!? Every time when I open a sweet case, I get excited!! It's one of the best moments during the tea ceremony... (whoops, my mistake! The best moment must be when I start eating.)

So now it's time for Cherry blossom viewing!!

Today it's raining here in Western Japan.
I'm sorry for full-bloomed cherry(桜) blossoms.

But I did all my enerty to enjoy beautiful cherry flowers last weekend♡♡♡ I have nothing to regret:)



This is Weeping Japanese Cherry, and it seems like a (pink) waterfall.



This one is Somei Yoshino (Prunus yedoensis.) Very popular & common kind of cherry now. I felt I was dreming when I saw this scenery. Flowers were moving like waves in the blue sky. 'Beautiful' wasn't enough to express the moment.



Woops, don't forget to see cherry branches with a river (water)! They make the best match♥



Oh, YES!! Now it's time for wearing kimono♬