Yuakata party with 1 participant

Since I bought two new yukatas when my brother was here, I have been looking for an excuse to wear a yukata. One of my friends said that "in July and August you can wear a yukata every day [with no special reason] without it being weird".

Yesterday I managed to leave work already at 20:00, and when I got home I noticed an obi (kimono belt) that I had bought but never used. Yukatas aimed and young people come with obis that have a ready made knot, and you use Velcro to keep the belt in place. The yukata I used when going to the festival a few weeks ago came with a nice obi of that type, so recently I have not practiced tying obis.

Yesterday I figured that since I had some time with nothing to do, I might as well practice tying my obi. While I was pretty confident in doing that a few years ago, it turned out that by now I did not remember anything at all. Except how to tie a heko-obi (兵児帯), which is very easy.

This weeks new geta

I opened up YouTube and started practicing. After awhile, the knot looked pretty good every time I tied it, and I was getting hungry. I decided to have a "yukata party", and went out to eat in one of my new yukatas, wearing a pair of geta that I bought this week too.

Doing magic at Ropossa

I stopped by Ropossa to have some food. I also got lots of ice cream and some waffles filled with green tea and whipped cream. I was asked to do some magic for a few groups of guests there, and I played a card game for an hour or so with a man who comes there the first Thursday of every month, and who taught me this game.

Showing the obi knot

When I was leaving to go home, the mama or Ropossa wanted to take some photos of me in my yukata, and especially of the obi knot.

When I uploaded one photo to Facebook, I saw that one really nice and funny regular guest in our magic bar was uploading photos from our magic bar saying she was celebrating her birthday there. She had once said she wanted to see me in a yukata, since she just missed me when I was there dressed in a yukata last time. So I stopped by there to say hello too. She was there with her husband, who I have only briefly met once before at the Hokkaido University school festival. So I was asked to show them some magic too.

On my way home, I stopped by a bar where one of my friends works. There, I ended up sitting next to a woman I had never met before, but who was wearing a kimono. So my "yukata party for 1" turned into a "kimono party for 2". This sudden doubling of the number of participants made me feel less lonely. And I was asked to show some magic again.