Have a great Year of the Ox!

This is my favourite photo. I think it’s pretty clear why.

This is Kasumi’s favourite photo. The two of us are framed against a background of cherry blossoms.

We took over 50 posed-photos on the day, but only bought three. It was heaps of fun and I think Kasumi looks absolutely gorgeous.

Don’t forget to leave a comment! We love to hear what you think about our travels and photos!

I think Kimono’s look awesome and are a perfect example of Japanese culture. I love seeing lovely looking Kimono’s, and their intricate designs and colours. The more basic (and ugly) ones are still nice, but nothing beats seeing a lovely girl/woman dressed in a beautiful Kimono. One of my favourite pictures of my girlfriend is her in a Kimono.

Kimono’s can be very expensive. A good quality one would cost around a million yen, which would be over $14 000AUD!!! Crazy!!! The designs vary a lot too, so I can understand how people can become connaisseurs of Kimonos.

This picture above is of Maki Horikita, one of my favourite Japanese actors, and shamelessly stolen from some site on the web. It is reproduced here for your (and my) viewing pleasure. She is in a lot of dramas and I’ve seen her around on a LOT of ads in Japan, including Panasonic, Docomo and lots more. I’m going to leave Maki-talk for a separate post, let’s not get side tracked.

Kyoto is reknown for it culture, and you can see Kimono-dressed ladies walking around a lot. However, it felt very, very weird to go up to them and ask (in very bad japanese) to take a photo of them. So I resorted to taking photos of them afar. However, there weren’t as many as I expected.

The below photo was a ninja shot, taken outside Himeji Castle. We were leaving, and didn’t have time to go ask her to take a photo. She was posing for a number of tourists, so it wouldn’t have been a problem asking her to pose.

Her Kimono is one of the prettiest I’ve seen in Japan (in person).

I’m hoping to see a lot more, and perhaps take some photos with people around the new years, though I guess most people will wear Yukatas.

And here’s us wearing some kimonos!

This was a simple photo-shoot in Japan. I had to specifically request the katana though. They kept wanting me to hold a fan!

Kimonos = cool!