We stayed in a fun hotel in Miyajima on Monday night. It was not a traditional Japanese ryokan, really, but it did have a whole entrance area – a big wooden gate and private area enclosing the door to our room, and then once inside, a tiled lower area for removing shoes (complete with shoe cabinet, shoe bench and shoe horn, and “inside slippers,” of course), and then a step up to the main hallway, a shower/soaking tub room off the bathroom, and a tatami living room area. It was basically like a mini-version (or not so mini!) of a Japanese apartment.
Everyone – including the students and especially Aardvark – seemed to enjoy the yukata (summer/festival weight kimono, also used as bathrobes, which is how I use mine – a hand-me-down from Don – at home).
Aardvark insisted we dress her up in the yukata, despite it being an adult size.
We did our best.
She was pleased enough to entrust us with doing it again when there were yukatas waiting on the bed at our Kyoto hotel, where we spent the rest of the week (as you can see from the picture below, it was otherwise a pretty typical hotel room).
