Summer is here, which means attending festivals, shooting off fireworks with the kids, drinking mugi-cha (barley tea) and engaging in “air-con wars” with my wife, who won’t let me turn on the air conditioning until the room is hot enough to melt lead. It also means I can change to my preferred sleep-wear of choice, my jinbei, which is essentially a light Japanese cotton kimono worn after getting out of the bath or for sleeping in, or to events like the neighborhood festival. The other day I came out of the bedroom wearing my jinbei to find my Japanese family standing there, of course wearing normal yofuku (“Western clothing”), i.e. jeans, T-shirts and so on. because they’d been up for a few hours already. We all just stood there for a few seconds contemplating the irony of the gaijin who was dressed like a samurai and the Japanese wearing normal clothes, and then laughed. By the way, we’ve gotten some of these cool jinbei pajamas in stock if you’d like to check them out.
Summer is the season for wearing a jinbei.
