So, it’s been a while!
Why? Well, since starting a second job at a nightly bar, work has been keeping me really busy. I didn’t have one complete day without work for the whole of December! Of course that wore me out, so I started the year with a slight fever and a tummy ache (ouch!).
But things quickly got better! First of all, having started a second job, my financial situation has really improved! I found out recently that as an Working Holiday Visa resident I’m obligated to pay 20% in taxes from my salary every month, which is 4 times as much as the average Japanese (tax in Japan is based on yearly income, but on average it’s between 5 and 10%). This meant that despite working extra shifts and long hours at my part time job, in the end the amount I had left after paying taxes, rent, supplies and so on, would be just around 20.000 yen (which is approximately 191 USD – for 1 month food expenses, transport and basic fun). So a second job was necessary, and it leaves me with 70.000 yen extra to spend as I please ❤
Another thing that turned my mood upside down, was the fact that I’m 20 years old – which in Japan is the registered legal age! Like most countries around the world, Japan too has special celebration to mark the coming of age – seijinshiki 成人式.
Seijinshiki Takes place in the beginning of January, close the the day of Seijin (成人の日 – 13th of January), but precisely what day varies from town to town. In the beginning of January, tired university students, part timers and one-room renters return home to their home town in order to celebrate their coming of age with their friends from the neighborhood, and pay gratitude to the parents who raised them. Following tradition, girls get the rare chance to dress up in kimonos (long-sleeved ones when young and unmarried), and the boys dress in either traditional Japanese hakama or a suit, the latter being more common.
So of course, not daring to miss the chance to dress up in a kimono, I decided before coming to Japan that I too would take part in the Seijinshiki. And here’s another reason why it was a good decision to get a second job – my other boss insisted on me borrowing her kimono, the exact same one she wore over 30 years ago to her own ceremony – in the same town where I went to celebrate mine! She also made an appointment with her own beauty salon in my name, and even paid for hair and kitsuke – the dressing of a kimono (something which is pretty damn hard to do yourself, so there’s a bunch of people out there who do it professionally for a living!).
So 6 o’clock in the morning I had my hair done, got dressed in the kimono, and by 8 o’clock I was on the packed morning subway headed to Hakata station to meet up with my friend and her family. A foreigner in a kimono, 8 o’clock in the morning – boy did I turn heads!
The ceremony itself was not much to talk about, but I spend an entire day dressed in a kimono, and I’ve never felt more beautiful or more powerful as a woman as I did when wearing that – I could go for the rest of my life wearing only kimonos, if I had the money to back it up! (Even cheap kimonos are no less than 100.000 yen). My friend and I went to karaoke dressed in kimonos and sang nothing but old-time Japanese enka, songs which are usualy mellow and talk of bitter love, the Japanese spirit and/or history. Of course I sang my personal favorite, Fuyumi Sakamoto’s “Yozakura Oshichi” –> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MulAQxB0G3k
The experience was simply amazing, and I can only encourage people to participate if they get the chance – and ladies, If you get the chance to wear a kimono, don’t turn it down!
Continue reading →
In My Japan 