With summer almost on us, that means travel deals have dried up with all the revenge travel going on.
Time to do some work around the house!
Back in March when I was in Japan, I did some Obi shopping in Nagoya. Obi’s are the middle stomach wrap in a kimono. My nephew Julian took me to the used Obi district (I kid you not) and walked into this LARGE store and quickly gravitated to the “sale section” where everything as color tagged as to its price. 100 yen, 500 yen, 1000 yen, 2500 yen, 5000 yen – I wasn’t buying the upper two tags. At the time I was there, it was about 110 yen to the dollar.
It was a huge section that took my breath away – thinking about how many I could put in my suitcase and whether I’d have to buy another!
In the end I settled on five Obis and five Happi coats which are sort of semi-formal dinner wear.
And ready for packing…
So, here is the living room before…
And after adding five new Obi’s to the collection:
Yes, like Minnie Pearl, I left the price tags on.
If you are curious about the process of making obi, here is a link to a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsUr6GZSyn8
And here are Marybeth and I modelling two of the Happi coats…
Even before this addition, I had a new guest to the house whose first comment was “It’s like a museum in here.” High praise for walking into my living room!
But, on a more somber note, there is a graphic that is hanging under the smallest of the three oils:
This is a map of the destruction of the center of Tokyo by US Armed Forces in 1945 using Napalm to incinerate the city. The one museum I visited on this year’s trip was a museum dedicated to telling the story. There were at least 60 other cities that suffered the same fate. All of this was BEFORE the two atomic bombs were dropped. War is an ugly thing.
Sorry to end on such a sobering note. My shrine to the resilience of the Japanese people.
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Wonder full ❤️