[JAPAN] Kimonos & Tea ceremony
February 28th, 2010
One of the highlights of our kyoto trip was, kimono wearing and tea ceremony. At first, we thought we won’t get the chance of wearing kimono ,simply because most of our funds were going low, until we found WAK Japan‘s brochure, that offered kimono wearing and tea ceremony for only Y4,900! It’s a fairly good deal even though its only a 1 hour session, you get to have a tea ceremony as well (which was on our list of to-do’s).
Us girls, have been looking forward to the experience 
moi getting dressed by the ladies there, it may look easy but they told us they had to take a course for i think a few weeks/months just to learn how to put on a kimono!
We got to pick, mix and match our kimono + obi sash!
We learnt you are meant to wear yukata, and kimono etc ‘left over right’, which is quite interesting and nit picky in a way, because the other way would signify ‘death’. (Can you tell I got sooo chubby during Japan?, thank god this is near the end of it…)
I love obi bows
Next, the tea ceremony started with some sweets.
And we learnt how to make tea from green tea powder, which simply involved crazy whisking with that whisk you see.. wish I had bought one home, it was fun to use 
it creates the foamy cappuccino like texture at the top, which almost makes it less bitter.
Got out of looking clean and polished in our kimono and back into our jeans and joggers, off to the Imperial Palace! Pity we couldn’t go in – as it is closed to public on weekends 
Still took a photo to show that we’ve been there (my lowerpro backpack came into good use as a tripod, though a lil wonky haha)
Plum blossoms, I only learnt of them since going to Japan, they look different to Cherry blossoms These were just along the paths to the imperial palace, a few trees had already blossomed, all we could do is imagine how beautiful it is when its spring!
Another to-do, was to find geisha’s (they are called geikos now), We were told they only come out at a certain time and place (yes we made them sound like creatures lol), so incase we couldn’t spot them in the Gion District (historic part of kyoto), we were told to go to this performance arts museum/centre, and found Maikos performing (I believe they are like geiko’s apprentices).
We bussed down to the Gion district for a little stroll, I had expected it to be more busy but it was mainly surrounded with performance places ft geikos, and restaurants, and the occasional souvenir shop. Alot of the food there is very expensive because it is like those Japanese set menus – kinda like degustation.
We spotted some Japanese girls with really pretty kimono, we asked them to take a photo with us but they rejected us We’re girls though! not sleazy men I really, really, loved the fabrics though!
We saw this fat mole fella at a few places in kyoto, I wonder what his significance is?
Bye bye Kyoto, Hello Osaka…!
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