MOPS

MOPS is Mother of Preschoolers and is a bimonthly group they have here on base. I went to my first meeting today! There are lots of ladies involved and I found lots of them have babies! Yay. Play dates will happen, hopefully! So every other Thursday we get together and have food, fellowship and some kind of activity. Today, a Japanese lady came and told us about upcoming festivals and fun things happening around Iwakuni. She showed us how to dress in the summer kimono, called the yukata. She was very precise with her demonstration. The Japanese are very respectful when it comes to tradition. Every tuck, crease, and bow has a purpose and had to be perfect. For example, single ladies have kimonos or yukatas with very long sleeves and when they get married they get ones with shorter sleeves. Also, you drape the left side of the robe across the right side of the robe because you do it the opposite way (right over left) for the deceased. Another thing a woman must do is have the back of the kimono lay off the nap of the neck about a fists size distance. That shows the person is an adult woman. Ah, tradition. And then we learned how to make an origami samurai hat! She said the Japanese start learning origami in preschool. Pretty neat stuff! I'm looking forward to our next meeting!


origami samurai hat...mine was with newspaper. it looked just like this though!

a traditional yukata.

just thought I'd throw a picture of Cora in here. She is the reason why i get to go to MOPS meetings! ;)