Bal Masque

Some of you who lives in Northern countries actually celebrate Midsummer while it's just another day in wet season down here in Japan.  It's kind of funny since Midwinter is marked on the calender as one of the days of importance.  To be precise, Midsummer is marked as a day of importance on the calender but we do not celebrate or anything.  Perhaps everybody so hate winter and we all need a reminder spring will come eventually, before the weather becomes harsher (the coldest is February here).  

Anyway June in Japan is not a very nice month.  It's VERY WET.  It's either wet and chilly or wet and hot.  It's a transitional month before summer which is worse; July being hotter and humid and August being the hottest and more humid.  

It's not very comfortable to wear a mask in June in Japan (or any other summer month, for that matter) but if I were to attend a masquerade ball on Midsummer's night, then I would like one of these masques here and dress like Titania.  "The Merchant of Venice" is a mask maker whose web page I stumbled across years ago.  They do not update their web page very often, if ever, so after a few visits I stopped checking on it until about a month ago when I moved from Internet Explore to Firefox and thought it was a good idea to make sure all the bookmarks still worked.  The page still exists and I am glad for it but I doubt they have added any new mask since last time I visited their site.  I have not purchased any yet, but my favorite is a one called "succubus" which you can find in Gothic category.  I might one day place an order for it...

Happy Midsummer and enjoy the longest day of the year.

P.S.  I wonder it's also called a midsummer even in Southern hemisphere?