The day has arrived: Japanese Culture Day! Unfortunately I’ll miss the event at school because I’m home with a sick Cy. I was looking forward to seeing the kids’ classmates in all their finery, but I’ll have to wait for others’ photos instead.

I chaperoned Tessa’s class trip yesterday, and I chatted up some of the kids on what they would wear. When I heard of Japanese Culture Day I assumed that most kids would wear kimono, yukata, and similar. I quickly learned that the kids branch out in all directions including their favorite anime costumes and martial arts attire. The school’s principal sent out the following guidelines, which made me laugh. It’s definitely Exhibit A for Lessons Learned the Hard Way:

• No weapons or facsimiles of weapons are allowed
• No dressing as yakusa or other criminal figures
• Boys may not dress in Japanese girl school uniforms or as women
• Girls wearing Japanese girl school uniforms must still comply with the appropriate length of skirt as indicated in the Saint Maur dress code

To tide you over in the mean time, here are a few shots of Tessa in our garden before school this morning. We did OK thanks to last week’s How to Wear a Kimono class–and the magic of YouTube. As I like to say: from a galloping horse, it looks pretty good!