Kimono
Today was amazing!
After an early breakfast, Chris & I headed to Kyoto Tower just opposite Kyoto Station. Before leaving England, we had booked an experience where you get to hire a kimono each, complete with photographs taken. The outfits are heavy & restricting of course, but they are beautiful & it as such an amazing experience. We chose our kimono's & were dressed - it took the woman dressing me a little longer because I'm much bigger/taller than the average Japanese girl! I also had my hair styled, which was really cool. Them we had a few pictures taken & chose two prints. And then off we went!
We decided to go up to the top of Kyoto Tower, seeing as we were already in the building. We've been up so many tall buildings recently, but I haven't tired of the views! The staff at the top of Kyoto Tower were ever so pleasant & we got some fab pictures. We then made our way to a place called Higashi-Honganji (東本願寺), which is a temple of Buddhism. It was really quiet compared to other shrines & temples we've been to, & we had to take off our shoes before walking up the steps to the buildings. The inside of the building/temple was stunning, with painted ceilings, gold leaf statues, & burning incense. It was lovely walking around it in kimono though - made everything a little more special.
We then got the train to the Imperial Palace & got a lot of looks, smiles & compliments - two westerners wearing traditional Japanese Kimono could have gone one of two ways - either people would have taken offense to it & thought that it was wrong, or thought it great that we were embracing their culture & loved it. Thankfully it was the later! People seemed to love it, with cries of 'kawaii' (cute), 'utsukushi' (beautiful), & 'sugoi' (amazing) coming our way. Chris noticed more happy stares & smiling faces than I did, but he's more area of that sort of thing anyway. The Imperial Palace was big * beautiful but we couldn't go into any of the actual buildings, but to be honest, we didn't really need to as the outside was impressive enough. We were able to get some great photos & we were even stopped by a Japanese guy who wanted to take our picture! He said he had never seen westerners in kimono before & said I looked beautiful. He was ever so sweet.
We were out for about six hours before heading back to Kyoto Tower where I spoke to a couple of woman who were interested in us, & bought a small waving cat for mum. We went back to the rental place & got undressed (well, Chris undressed himself while I obviously needed help!). I had a wonderful giggle with one of the girls & showed her pictures of my rabbits & chatted half in English, half in Japanese. She was lovely & asked for a photo with me. After saying our goodbyes, we went back to the stall we got Mum's cat from so I could get a magnet. The ladies there didn't recognise us to begin with because we were no longer wearing kimono! They laughed with us & joked & pointed out that I could now move freely & run around as I now had trainers on! We headed home & had noodles at the hotel.
It's been an utterly amazing day & I'd do it again in a heart beat.
