My blue furisode arrived yesterday! It is so beautiful - I unfolded it and put it on to see what it is like. It's very dense! It's much thicker and heavier than a normal kimono. I found out that there is actually a term for this type - kakeshita! Kakeshita is a wedding-specific kimono that is much more substantial then a normal one and that has a lightly padded hem. I had noticed the hem in the pictures and it made me wonder if I was getting the right thing, since that was definitely different from normal kimonos. I know it was being called a 'wedding furisode', but it still gave me reason to pause. Because I guess you could say that an uchikake is a wedding kimono. Nonetheless, it turns out that I got the exact type that I needed! And it makes me strangely happy to have learned another term.

I learned how to do something else last night as well - I taught myself how to properly fold a kimono! It is a pretty elaborate procedure, but I managed well enough by following some instructions I found online. I'm going to practice doing it on a normal kimono that I have so that I get the hang of it.

I didn't take any photographs of it when I had it out and I'm not sure when I'm going to feel like getting it out again, but it's slightly different then the pictures showed. In the seller's photographs of it, the blue looks like it fades to black at the bottom edges where the majority of the flowers are - but in reality it is a rich purple! Definitely not black. That works out just fine though, because I was planning on having a sparse third colour of yellow and it will be a beautiful contrast.

For now it is living in a plastic storage box that I keep under the bed, wrapped up in torn pink tissue paper. The paint used to make the flowers has a plastic smell, so I put in a couple of sticks of incense into the box too. There's actually a special type of wrapping paper for storing kimonos, as well as incense, so one of these days I might have to order some. I feel bad that these beautiful kimonos that I'm going to be getting over the next couple of days won't be living in ideal storage. I hope they don't mind.