[Illustration: THE _OBI_ FOR ORDINARY WEAR. FOR GIRLS. FOR WOMEN.] The tying of the _obi_, especially of the dress-_obi_, is by no means a simple process. In the first place a woman puts on her dress in the same way as a man, that is, she folds the front edges left over right, and not right over left as in a European dress. When she has thus folded her underwear, which she sometime ties round with a cloth cord to keep it in place, she takes her _kimono_, single or double as the case may be, and catching the two edges near the ends of the band, holds them out behind her and raises them tightly until the skirt is just at her ankles, that is, at the height at which she wishes it to be, and then folding the edges stiffly one over the other, she ties the dress at the hip with a cloth cord to prevent its slipping. Then she arranges the upper half of the dress, putting the band in order and pulling the loose part down so that the breast is pressed almost flat, and ties the tuck just over the hips with a second cord. The tuck is thus tied above and below; for this two different cords are used in formal dresses, but for ordinary wear a single long narrow sash of crêpe may be used for both purposes, the sash passing over the tuck at the side. Next, the _obi_, if it is for ordinary wear, is folded in two along its length and wound twice round the waist, thus concealing the cord on the tuck and leaving at the back a foot or so of one end, while the other end is three feet or more in length. The former is folded lengthwise with the lining inside. The two ends are tied in such a way that the doubled end comes out at the side slanting downwards under the knot. The second end is, while being tied, folded once with the lining outside and is pulled vertically so that the folded part is held straight up; and it is drawn out until the length above the knot is about the same as that remaining behind and then dropped over the knot; and so, when it hangs down, its end or the fold is higher than the end of the _obi_ just by the width of the knot, that is, by a few inches. The end under the knot displays the face and the fold itself the lining. Some people keep the knot from coming loose by tying a cord over it round the _obi_, while others merely tighten it when it slackens.