How to Spend a Penny

As graduation season in Japan approaches, I can’t help but ask that age-old question of how Japanese women pee when they are wearing furisode kimono. In a word it’s complicated. Fortunately, the kind people at Ritz Studios have provided a how-to guide.

Step 1: Use a Western-style toilet.

Step 2: Put a handkerchief under your chin so as to not stain the kimono with your make-up or sweat.

Step 3: Pull your sleeves up and tuck them into the obi-domé rope-like belt.

Make sure the obimé knot does not come untied.

Step 4: Open up the suso and tuck these up into the obi-domé, too.

Like this!

Step 5: Do the same with the nagajuban.

Step 6: Separate and then fold the hem of the susoyoké.

Step 7: Hike the susoyoké up high over your fanny.

Step 8: Tie the ends together and sit down and relieve yourself.

If that’s too much trouble, just pick up a “Stadium Pal”.

Another glass of bubbly? Thanks, Stadium Pal!

Jeepers, Creepers

This is a story “Wacky”, the owner of a number of shoe stores here in Fukuoka, related to me the other day:

"A high school boy came into my George Cox shop this afternoon and asked if I remembered him. I replied that I didn’t, but when he told me that he had come to the shop with his father six months earlier it all came back to me.

"He had come with his father to try and get his old man to buy a pair of Creepers for him. During the hour or so that the two of them were there, we talked about all kinds of things and I mentioned a high school girl who had once come to the shop. She, too, had wanted to get someone—her grandmother, in this case—to buy the shoes for her. I told her that shoes like these—at ¥37,000 they aren’t cheap, after all—weren’t the kind of thing you should be trying to get someone purchase for you.

"When the boy heard that, it gave him pause and he decided against having his father buy them. Instead, he went out and got a job at a convenience store, and for the next six months he worked part-time before and after school, saving what he earned. And now he was back at my shop, wanting to buy the shoes with his own money."

I joked that Wacky should have refused to sell the kid the shoes and chewed him out instead for breaking school rules by getting a job. “The little brat should have his nose in a textbook right now and not thinking about shoes and fashion and other nonsense.” 

Kidding aside, though, I had to admit that it was quite a lesson the boy had learned and told Wacky so: “He’ll treat those shoes with the utmost care now that he knows what it took to buy them. You may have very well just saved the boy from a life of indolence and purposelessness.”

Pleats and Cuffs

No, no, no.

I thought pleated chinos with pleats and those goddamn cuffy things had gone the way of the dodo. Apparently not, if the display at Brooks Brothers is anything to go by. Seems all you need to be a designer nowadays is a working knowledge of the 80s.

Wonder if they have any job openings. See, I’ve got a great idea for polo shirts with double collars. Ingenious! Looks like you’re wearing two polo shirts.

Good grief . . .