Team Fabulous!

On Saturday Hong and I went to London EXPO.

I haven't had the greatest past few days, so I don't feel like talking about my coordination and why I chose what. Instead, I'll just show you the photos.

Ryu-bu dance practice

Every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday for the past month I've been doing an Okinawan dance practice. It's not anything serious, since this dance is for performance at the end of May, but at the same time we are taking it pretty seriously. I don't want to look like a fool in front of many people, hence 3 days a week practice. If it was up to me, I would practice every day, but that's my obsessive compulsive control freak talking.

Anyway, one day we had an extra person at the practice and I asked her to film it :) Filming it was a good idea, as I already see some things I was doing that I was able to watch for at the last practice. Come next week, we'll start practicing with our costumes and hopefully I'll have an actual performance video to show you too!

Just Arrived #27

Sorry everyone for being quiet on my end. May turned out way busier than I expected, with APAH stuff and our vacation. To top everything off, the weather had decided that it's November and not May, so it's cold and rainy. Any time I think of wearing kimono (like today), I look outside and change my mind. The rain wouldn't have scared me back in FL, as there are lots of places to go that are inside, but where I live here, I don't have that many inside places to hang out. 

After coming back from our vacation I went to check the mail and there were two packages from Japan waiting for me! I actually won these things back in February, but it took me forever to pay and then combined with the shipping times, forever to get. My own fault, really, but since I'm a pretty patient person, I was ok with that. 

First comes the set of haori. I mainly wanted it for that green one with what looks like daisies to me. In real life it's more olive colored and not this bright in-your-face green as in the photos. I'm not afraid of in-your-face green, but I prefer olive, so I'm extra happy. 

I immediately knew that this haori would be one of those understated but absolutely gorgeous in real life ones. I love the watercolor effect.

 I'm still on the fence about this haori. I'll have to take it out and look at it again before I decide if I'm going to keep it, because it's just too busy looking for me. I'm not showing the forth haori because I'm definitely not keeping it.

I also got a set of obiage, and looking at this photos there are nothing THAT special. Until I saw the close up (next photo) and I KNEW I had to have it. Oh yeah! Please sign me up for a striped obiage! I already know which kimono I'm going to wear it with ;P

Kimono Photo Shoot Fundraiser

This year I got involved with the APAH again, and a lot more than in any year before. On May 4th Hong came over to help me with a big photo shoot fundraiser on base. We started around 9am on the day, and didn't finish until after 6pm. I don't really want to talk about the day as much, because it didn't start that well. Those who know me closely already heard all about it, so I don't want to repeat the whole things here. At the end everything worked out, and we raised almost exactly $450. We also learned many things for the next time, IF I ever decide to do anything like that again.

I'm especially thankful for the Japanese ladies that came and stayed the whole day, helping with undressing people, putting away kimono and promoting the fundraiser. Of course, the whole thing wouldn't have happened without Hong either, who switched her shift at work just so she can come and help me.

You can see some more photos in my Facebook album.

Photo shoot with Kenji - more traditional

 The second outfit I choose was more traditional. I had a kimono from Taisho era which was 165cm long which I snapped up precisely because of that, and the stripes of course, that I couldn't wait to wear. It is pretty decent in the wingspan too, and fairly wide too, so it was very easy to wear. Lets just say I'm really happy that I got this kimono!

For haneri I used the haneri I made back in December over at April's house, it's white silk with rhinestones snowflakes designs. Since our weather was all over the place in March, I felt like it was an appropriate not to winter that just wouldn't leave. The obi is my favorite black and white bamboo nagoya that I got from Hong. I also used a turtle brooch as an obidome, but you can't see it that well in photos. Still, it is there and it's super adorable!

Kenji took me to a small village on the way to Bury St. Edmunds that had a convenient phone booth location, meaning it wasn't near garbage bins like every other one around here, and it was in an open area. I've always wanted to take photos in kimono in the red phone booth, and now I have them!

I'm extremely happy with the phone booth photos, especially the very bottom one. I think that photo shows very well how one can still be sexy in kimono without having to show much skin at all! Or could it just be me that looks very sexy in kimono...? ;)