Yukata Matsuri

22nd/23rd June, 2007

I had been looking forward to the ‘Yukata Matsuri’ for a long time. Yukata means summer kimono and Matsuri means festival. In other words it was a festival in which everyone dressed up in Yukata’s. I was so excited because I had bought myself a really cool pink Yukata to wear and I couldn’t wait to parade around in it. I really did look like an ‘Aussie Geisha’!! The boys got dressed up too and also looked the part in their 'Jimbe'.







The hardest thing about wearing a Yukata is tying the obi into a bow. On the Friday night some of my students from the university came around to help Marie, Lauren, Jodi, Jess (Jono’s sister) and I into our Yukata’s. With the 4 of them dressing us we were ready in a flash!! Lauren and I bought men’s style Japanese shoes as the women’s ones didn’t quite fit. They were not as pretty as the women’s ones but I was ok with that because I think I was much more comfortable.



The festival was held over 2 days and our little quiet Himeji soon became very lively and packed with thousands of people. The atmosphere was amazing. The streets were lined with stalls upon stalls upon stalls with a HUGE variety of food, drink and games to play – all Japanese style of course!!

The first night (Friday) we decided to eat dinner in a restaurant. We had okonomiyaki – it was delicious. As there were so many of us we had to split up into small groups. Our table decided to order a JUMBO okonomiyaki – well it was jumbo alright. Check this out!! We didn’t get through it all.



Being in our Yukata’s we couldn’t go without doing purikura. Plus Jess and Liam (Jono’s sister and her boyfriend) needed to experience it before they went back to Australia. Well that’s my excuse for wanting to go anyway. ☺

At these festivals we had heard that there are many gangs that travel together trying to cause trouble. We had pretty much got to the end of the evening without seeing anything of the sort……until we spotted a big gang. There were many police trailing them and people with video cameras. It was crazy. We had heard that you are not meant to stare at these people or you could get arrested. Well anyway, all of a sudden just as the gang walked passed us a big commotion happened and everyone seemed to pile on top of this one guy. We somehow got caught up in it all and I turned around to see Lauren being taken around a corner. We ran up to see if she was ok and she was – she just had to run to get out of the way and from my angle it looked like she had been taken out. It was funny once we were out of the way and safe. By this stage people had started to clear and so we headed home.

On the Saturday we were heading to the festival again so we dressed in our Yukata’s once more. Lauren was very clever as she worked out how to tie the obi and so had the task of tying everyone’s obi’s for them. She did a really good job too. We had a little pre get together with the people from our residence before we headed to the festival. It was good to see everyone dressed up in Yukata’s.





Once we got there we decided to head to the castle to take some pictures. You’ve got to love the castle for a background. Once we were done taking happy snaps we headed back to the main area which seemed to have much more atmosphere than the previous night.





This time instead of sitting in a restaurant we decided to just roam the streets and check out all the stalls. I really enjoyed just watching everyone dressed so beautifully in their Yukata’s. I didn’t even see any of the same one which was amazing considering how many people there were. Over the 2 days many students from our schools called our names and got excited when they saw us. I felt like a celebrity. I took a couple of photos with a few students and made them happy.



I had a fantastic time at the Yukata Matsuri and I can’t wait for another opportunity to be able to get dressed up again.