It’s the day which I could finally put my make up skills learnt over the course of 1 week into good use! Yes, we went to Kyoto and decided to try wearing Kimono there.
Thanks to Ruby who researched and planned out the schedule beforehand and we bought the Keihan Railway Kyoto-Osaka Sightseeing 1 Day pass for 800 yen from the train station. That was the first time I was really glad that Ruby can converse so well in Japanese and we had absolutely no trouble buying and understanding the usage of the passes thanks to her.
We reached Fushimi Inari station (Kyoto) at around 10.30am and I was fascinated by the interior design and external architecture of the railway station. It’s a ground level open air station with the left and right platforms separated by railway tracks in the middle. The orange pillars and the station name signboard overhead add to the overall traditional Japanese feel. As we exit the station, we were greeting by the sounding of the chimes, signaling that the next train was approaching the station. On our left, the people posing for photos on the railway quickly moved out of the track as the crossing gates lowered down slowly. On our right was where our Kimono rental shop, Aiwafuku , was located and we decided that we should head straight to the shop to rent our kimono.
We were technically 20 mins early as our reservation timing was 11am but the shop attendants kindly let us in. We were greeted warmly by a young Mandarin speaking Taiwanese lady and she kindly explained to us about the kimono rental details. We took off our shoes and were each given a big bag, with a number tagged to it, that was meant to hold our clothes and other personal belongings. We were then led into a room full of kimono hang right out in front of us. There were all sorts of colours and designs that all 3 of us females didn’t know where to start choosing. I initially thought of how my mum always tells me that I look good in pink colour clothes and hence decided to go for those in pink to narrow my choices. I managed to pick out a pink colour kimono with flowery patterns on it but a shop attendant suggested a pale yellowish one with Ajisai flowers design. She mentioned that it’s currently Japan’s rainy season (Ajisai is Japanese rainy season’s flower) and wearing a kimono with Ajisai flowers design was a good idea to remember the season we came to Japan when we looked back at the photos of this trip in the future. As someone who’s quite nostalgic, I agreed to what she said and chose that design eventually. If you think that that’s the end of the choosing process, you’re very wrong! That’s actually just step 1 of the many other choices to make. With the kimono that I chose hang on on her arms, I was soon led to the corner of the room by the same shop attendant to choose the Obi, a sash worn around my waist as part of the kimono outfit. This time round I gave in to my favourite colour blue and was soon given a choice between a dark blue obi and a light blue obi with grey colour on its flipped side. I was again convinced by the shop attendant that the light blue one would look better as they would fold the obi to show the flipped side and it’s a nice idea to show the light blue and grey contrasting colours. After the 3 of us girls finished with the choosing of our kimono and obi, we were then led upstairs to change into the outfit and also get our hair styled.
To answer the question that probably some of you have: Do we have to take out our undergarments? The answer is no. We were given an inner lining to wear before putting on the kimono to avoid dirtying the outfit. We were then given a choice from a wide variety of hairstyles (for long hair) and thankfully for short hair there’s only two kinds: a sideway braiding or a bunch of hair tied up in a mini bun which kind of looked weird to me in the sample pic on the brochure. I went with the braided hairstyle and bam! With a purple flower(again, chosen from a wide array of choices) on the side, I was transformed. My hair was styled so skillfully and I was staring at a beautiful sweet young lady in front of the mirror within minutes. The shop attendants were all saying “Kawaii” and that’s the first time I actually agreed and deemed that the adjective “cute” was fitting on myself.
After the hair was done, I then proceeded to stand in front of a full body length mirror where the shop attendant helped me to wear the kimono outfit and holy, god knows how many times she actually tied layers of towels, strings, clothes and blades around my waist area before I actually put on the kimono and obi. I counted 4/5 layers on myself and I was told to choose between a simple beaded design or a sophisticated flowery design of the accessory around my obi. Once again I chose a blue flower, this time going with my favourite dark blue colour. The outfit was finally done but that’s not the end. We had to choose a small hand carry bag to bring along our valuables. After all the trouble of choosing, we were finally led down to the first floor where Jeremy was long done with his outfit. According to him, we took around 30-45 mins but we were just bombarded with choices and choices that we were simply not aware of the passing of time. So sad that he only had a few choices but oh well, that’s not exactly a bad thing right? Before we head out to the streets, we made our last choice of choosing the Geta, a pair of sandals that goes with the kimono. By now, we were all used to choosing and were all glad that it’s all done.
Some additional footage:
It took us some time (actually not much effort) to convince Jeremy to also join in when we were making our reservation beforehand. Wearing a kimono wasn’t that uncomfortable as I thought it would be and I will strongly encourage anyone who’s visiting Japan to try it out. I strongly recommend Aiwafuku too, their service was great and I really enjoyed the experience!