Graduation time!

Not for me, though. Not yet. But for many students, March is graduation month. I went to Tokyo today and I noticed a lot of women - mostly younger women - in what I thought was "traditional" Japanese kimono. The first thought was, maybe it was their graduation attire. Anyway, I asked a Japanese friend and I was half right. It was graduation attire but it was not "traditional" Japanese kimono like this:

(Image taken from http://www.1carat.jp/images/kasou/kimono/kimono_img.jpg)

Instead, what I saw were actually called hakama, and they look like this:

(Image taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakama)

My friend added that these clothing styles are obviously very different from Korean traditional attire which looks like this:

(Image taken from http://blogimg.goo.ne.jp/user_image/03/c3/684b1b938b472ffdce5e613af44a3080.jpg)

Anyways, I googled "hakama" up and found that at least one definition says the hakama is also a traditional Japanese attire. My friend clarified though that it is not as mainstream as the more traditional kimono.