Fond memories of my yukata

As I scroll through Instagram posts that relate to kimono, I see that a lot of people in Japan are planning to go to the Arimatsu Shibori festival in Nagoya over the weekend. This is one of many moments when I feel left out, living outside of Japan as the physical distance between Switzerland and Japan gets in the way. 

Arimatsu Shibori is a type of tie-dye. Instead of dyeing silk, Arimatsu Shibori focuses on dyeing cotton, and so they produce a lot of yukata, a type of summer kimono. Even though a yukata is the most casual of all kimono, the patterns and colors of Arimatsu yukata are beautiful and they make anyone feel happy just by wearing one, or even just looking at someone wearing such a beautiful garment.

I don’t own an Arimatsu yukata, but I’ve accumulated several yukata of my own. My very first yukata is something that my grandmother bought for me in the summer of 1994. My grandmother taught me how to wear the yukata and how to tie an obi knot, and I went out with my sister to a summer festival in August. We didn’t want to leave the festival early, so we took the train home at around 9 pm, and this was really the first and only time we got told off by our grandfather. He was expecting us home on an earlier train. Since our grandparents lived in a remote area, the frequency of the trains was very low. In fact, it is still very low, or even worse, and this is probably due to the declining population in the area. In any case, we spent our teenage years in Boston so our sense of “early” and “late” was completely different from that of my grandfather.

Every year when summer comes, I reminisce about how we had fun back then despite the unexpected scolding we got from our grandfather. Up until the time I started to learn more about kimono, I used to think to myself, what a shame that I never wore my yukata after that one time, even though I had promised my grandmother that I was going to wear it in Boston. But now, I wear it every year.

So this year, I am very happy to have the opportunity to host a yukata event with Creative You at their Thalwil location. This time, I will be teaching, instead of being taught by my grandmother :)  I hope that I can create a moment that become a fond memory for someone else.