Himeji Yukata Festival

This weekend was the Himeji Yukata Festival. It is probably the biggest Yukata Festival in Japan and would be the biggest festival in the year for Himeji. The amount of people who attend this festival is just phenomenal! It was like the Royal Adelaide Show, but ten times busier!






In this festival, it gives everyone an excuse to walk around and look pretty wearing their colourful yukatas (a yukata is a summer kimono). Almost everyone who went to the festival was dressed in a yukata (including me!). My yukata was purple and had a pink obi (belt). I wore getta (traditional Japanese slippers) on the Friday night when I went, but decided that they were too painful to wear again on the Saturday, so I cheated and just wore my good old Spendless thongs from Adelaide!

It was so crowded that you just had to move with the crowd and you were pretty much pushed into position. I loved the atmosphere and the fact that everyone was dressed up so nicely. There were many food stalls that covered the footpath on both sides of the entire main street. I ate fried chicken and it was DELICIOUS!

We even went to the Himeji Castle to take photos with the castle in the background and they turned out really well. We went photo crazy this weekend!



We went to the pub afterwards, and then decided to walk home from the pub. It was about a forty minute walk, but we were all up for it, so Tina, Lauren, Chelsea and I all walked home together. On our way home, we saw a big, scary gang of high school boys wearing colourful outfits. They were either yakuza (the Japanese mafia) or bousozoku (the motorbike gang). Anyway, either way, we were scared because there were about twenty of them and only four of us! So we got out of their way so they could pass us and I was ready to make a dash for it in case anything bad happened, but all they said when they walked passed us was, “hello!” in really friendly voices. We said hello back and that was it! So I was packing my dacks for nothing! They weren’t so scary after all! Thank goodness! It was funny when we all looked back on the situation though!

So that was my first yukata experience. I must say it was a very exciting and fun one and it was especially fun when we all went to Tina’s house before going to the festival to get ready. Tina’s Japanese friends from the university she teaches at came over to help us put them on.











Then Lauren became a professional obi putter-on-erer so she did everyone’s obi for them! We all looked pretty flash! Almost everyone in our apartment building wore a yukata for the festival and we all got together and took photos of ourselves before hand. It was lots of fun!