Chopstick holders

 

Eating with chopsticks can seem easy once you've managed to learn how to pick up sushi without it falling apart, but there is more to it than just that.

You must be careful while eating with chopsticks, since sometimes what you do with them can resemble a funeral ceremony. Therefore no sticking the chopsticks up-right into your rice or passing on food from chopstick to chopstick (from another person). Don't point chopsticks at people either.

The one thing I find hardest to master though, is NO HOLDING ON TO YOUR CHOPSTICKS IF YOU'RE NOT USING THEM. If you're talking with someone and stop eating because you have something to say, I always keep holding on to my chopsticks, but it's actually really rude to do so.

In some Japanese restaurants they will provide you with a chopstick holder, but if the chopsticks are disposable they won't. Still, you can easily make an origami one of your own out of the wrapper. On the left you can see how the standard one is made. Of course you can make any origami figure that is square enough so the chopsticks don't roll off.

Once you've got the holder, just remember to never cross your chopsticks when resting them on the holder; they always must be parallel.

Kappa

Kappa are usually seen as mischievous troublemakers or trickster figures. Their pranks are usually rather innocent, such as loudly passing gas or looking up women's kimonos, but they can harm humans and even try to kill us.
As water monsters, kappa have been frequently blamed for drowning, and are often said to try to lure people to the water and pull them in with their great skill at wrestling.They are sometimes said to take their victims for the purpose of drinking their blood, eating their livers or gaining power by taking their shirikodama, a mythical ball said to contain their soul which is located inside the anus. Even today, signs warning about kappa appear by bodies of water in some Japanese towns and villages. Kappa are also said to victimize animals, especially horses and cows; the motif of the kappa trying to drown horses is found all over Japan. In these stories, if a kappa is caught in the act, it can be made to apologize, sometimes in writing. This usually takes place in the stable where the kappa attempted to attack the horse, which is considered the place where the kappa is most vulnerable.

 

It was believed that if confronted with a kappa there were a few means of escape: Kappa, for one reason or another, obsess over being polite, so if a person were to gesture a deep bow to a kappa it would more than likely return it. In doing so, the water kept in the lilypad-like bowl on their head would spill out and the kappa would be rendered unable to leave the bowed position until the bowl was refilled with water from the river in which it lived. If a human were to refill it, it was believed the kappa would serve them for all eternity. A similar weakness of the kappa in some tales are their arms, which can be easily pulled from their body. If their arm is detached, they will perform favors or share knowledge in exchange for its return. Once the kappa is in possession of its arm it can then be reattached. Another method of defeat involves the kappa and their known love of shogi or sumo wrestling. They will sometimes challenge those they encounter to wrestle or other various tests of skill.
Japanese parents sometimes write names on cucumbers and toss them into waters believed to be infested with kappa in order to mollify the creatures and allow the family to bathe.

The secrets of a geisha’s kimono

You probably know the basic names and pieces of a kimono, but there is much more to that robe than what meets the eye.

First of all there is the kimono. They tend to be all the same length, so no matter how short you are, you’ll probably get one that is similar in length to one that belongs to the tallest person in town. If it’s too long, you can fold it underneath the obi so that it doesn’t show.

Then there is the obi. The way it is tied can vary depending on who is wearing it, the season and/or the occasion. They are very long and can even reach one side of the hallway to the other, so just imagine how heavy it actually is when wearing it. Oh, and if it's tied up at the front then it's not a geisha, but a prostitute.

Darari-obi (lit. "suspended obi") is the obi knot that the maikos tend to wear. The bow nearly starts at the height of the shoulders and the edge nearly reaches the floor.

Apart from the obi there is also the obijime, a string that holds the obi in place.

Tabi are the ninja socks. There are many different types of shoes too, either those called geta (if they look like wooden beach shoes), okobo (the tall ones that maiko's usually wear) or zori.

They also change the type of underwear they are wearing depending on the weather. It's either ro, if it's summertime, or hitoe, in September. On top of the underwear but under the kimono there is the koshimaki, or thigh wrap, that is a silk cloth wrapped around the geisha's thighs. 

And you wonder how the geisha keep on putting things up their sleeves, such as fans or handkerchiefs, and nothing ever falls out? That's because there is a pocket inside the sleeves called a furi.

But what I find most hard to understand is the art of their hairstyles.

The momoware hairstyle (lit. "cut peach")is usually what the young geisha and maiko wear. It's an up-do with a (usually) red piece of cloth inside the bun. Men say that this is provocative because it looks like a madam's cave. If it has a pattern on it, the geisha has not yet had her mizuage, meening she is still pure.

Two other examples of hairstyles that maiko and geishas wear are the wareshinobu and the tsubushi shimada.

 

The photo is of a geisha wearing the momoware hairstyle. You can also see that she hasn't fully painted the back of her neck. She does this so that the men she will later compliment take more notice of the skin under the make-up. A geisha's neck is will always be shown until the first back bone, since it's "the most attractive part of a geisha's body". Something that would be like us seeing a girl wearing a mini-skirt.

 

In case you are curious, you should know that geisha try hard not to un-comb themselves, since doing so would mean a trip to the hairdresser, which not only is expensive but also painful the first few times. How do they sleep then? A geisha’s cushion consists in a stump of wood that makes your neck go stiff but permits you to stay beautiful the next day, called a takamakura.

A geisha isn’t a geisha just by wearing a kimono and having a funny hairstyle though; make-up is almost just as important. To put it on, a geisha uses many different brushes. I don’t know much about make-up, meaning nothing at all, so I’ll just tell you more or less what they use to paint their face and we’re done. First of all, they sometimes put a yellowish cream around their eyes and mouth that is made of nightingale excrements because it was supposed to be good for the skin. I say ‘sometimes’ because it was very expensive and I doubt they use it anymore. Then they spread wax all over their face and neck to later cover it up with the white paint. After this they add colour to their cheeks to not look like white pandas and then paint their lips and eyebrows. Kuroyaki is a black (hence the name) perfume that comes from crushed wood.

A geisha that has reached 30 years old no longer paints her face all white, but rather uses other kinds of make-up.

Clearly geisha do more than just try to look pretty. They have to learn all kinds of arts to be able to entertain men, such as knowing how to play a tsutsumi, a shamisen and a fue, they have to learn to dance and sing in the geisha way (nagauta). But I’ll tell you about this another time.