Housecleaning and the end of year party with my geisha family

At the end of the year, there are 3 annual events in my geisha household.
One of them is to clean the "Okiya", our geisha house, from top to bottom.
Another is to sew and repair some garments which are necessary for our kimonos.
For example, for fastening the Obi we use something called an “Obimakura”. The belt of the Obimakura is made from gauze, so we must replace it every year.
The other is our end of year party with my geisha mother and geisha sisters.

The end of year party was held on the 26th.
The sewing of the kimono garments was held on the 27th.
The thorough housecleaning of the "Okiya" was held on December 28th.

All events were held in the afternoon, because we had to attend the ozashiki parties in the evening.

This year, unfortunately I caught a cold a few days before so I felt it was hard to participate in those events.

On the 26th, my geisha mother invited us to the end of year party.
One of my geisha sisters is a mother of 2 little children, so my geisha mother selected a small izakaya which has a small private tatami room so that she could bring her children.
However in the end she couldn’t attend the party because she had also caught a cold.

By the way, the izakaya which my geisha mother had selected is well-known in the Hachioji geisha district for it’s special Kagoshima free-range chicken dishes so all my geisha sisters were looking forward to the end year party.

All of the dishes that we ate at the party, which were made from Kagoshima free-range chicken,  were more delicious than we had expected. I really enjoyed our end of year party.

On the 27th, when I arrived at the Okiya, my geisha sisters had already started the sewing, so I apologised for not taking an earlier train.

On the 28th, we cleaned the Okiya from top to bottom.
Unfortunately, one of my geisha sisters also caught a cold and had a stomachache, so she couldn’t attend the thorough housecleaning.

I was responsible for cleaning the second floor of the Okiya with two other geisha sisters.
There are 4 rooms on the second floor; a make-up room, a dressing room, a kimono closet and a room which is used by my geisha mother’s niece.

We didn’t decide who would clean which room or what specific job we would do, however we could work together efficiently.

My oldest geisha sister and I rearranged the contents of the drawers in two rooms while we were cleaning.
Since many people use the Okiya, it’s hard to know which things need to be thrown away and which things are important and need to be kept. We found many things which have been hoarded up over the years.

We started the thorough housecleaning at 10am and it finished at 1:30pm.
After all work was finished we all ate delivery Indian together, which my geisha mother treated us.

The 28th was the last work day for me in 2011, so I felt satisfied.