❖ About Your Kimono Concierge

Your kimono concierge is Meiko Matsumaru, representative of the Japanese cultural kimono club Mei. For more than twenty years she has taught kimono dressing for everyday wear, ceremonial occasions, foreign students and international visitors, and the formal montsuki hakama worn by Japanese men with family crests. She hosts a Tea Party with Foreigners in Kimono, a Dinner Party, and a Cruising in a Yukata gathering, and is currently preserving and passing down kimono culture through her original Kimono Sorting Notebook and a series of online seminars on the value and history of kimono.

❖ Arrival at the Tokyo kimono store

14:00

Your interpreter guide meets you in the lobby of your hotel in Tokyo at the scheduled start time and accompanies you by public transportation to the historic Tokyo kimono store, where Meiko Matsumaru is waiting to begin the afternoon.

❖ Lecture on authentic kimono

The concierge opens with the framework. You see and touch real kimono fabrics while she explains the categories that structure the craft: dyed (atozome) kimono in which the woven cloth is dyed afterwards, the yuzen technique perfected in the seventeenth century by the fan painter Miyazaki Yuzen; soft, woven pre-dyed (sakizome) kimono whose pattern is built into the yarn before the loom; and Tsumugi, a hand-spun silk whose subtle patterns emerge from the weave rather than the brush. The lecture covers types of kimono and obi for different occasions and coordination, the origin of the garment, kimono and Japanese ceremonial customs, anecdotes from the trade, and the manners and etiquette of wearing one. Any further questions you bring are answered before you choose your own.

❖ Selecting your kimono fabric and obi

Now you choose. Lengths of silk are laid out across the tatami floor of the store; the concierge takes each guest individually, ten to fifteen minutes per person (the pace varies with the size of the day's party), and walks you through pattern, color and obi. She explains the logic of each kimono - the season it belongs to, the occasion it suits, the colors that complement your complexion - so the choice is informed, not decorative.

❖ Dressing and fitting

With your fabric and obi chosen, the team dresses you into the kimono. The process is exact: the collar set just so, the hem brought to the right height, the obi knot tied to match the formality of the cloth, every fold adjusted to your body shape. You are not handed a costume; you are fitted into a garment, the way it has been worn in this country for centuries.

❖ Photographs while wearing the kimono

Time to wear the kimono in front of the store's backdrop kimono and let it be photographed. The concierge helps with stance, the position of the hands and sleeves, the tilt of the head - small details that separate the look of someone wearing a costume from the look of someone wearing a kimono. Your interpreter guide stays with you throughout.

❖ Etiquette, ceremony and closing questions

The afternoon closes on the cultural ground. The concierge addresses kimono manners and etiquette - how to walk, how to sit, how to bow in a kimono - and the role of the garment in Japanese celebrations and ceremonies. Any final questions you carry are met before you change out of the kimono. A small souvenir is given as you leave.

❖ Return to Your Hotel

17:00

Your interpreter guide accompanies you back to your hotel by public transportation, concluding the afternoon at the same lobby where it began.