Hot and a tiny bit bothered in Kyoto Part 3….

Oh dear, oh dear I was now very hot and very bothered. One voice was telling me to collapse on the pavement and just melt away, another was saying that I might never see these sights again, then that nagging voice would counter and say, it’s not humanly possible to keep going but then the other voice was saying to get a grip as it wasn’t that bad!

So a compromise was reached and we had a lovely long iced tea in a bookshop/cafe that served drinks in a traditional room with tatami mats. We made the drinks last and I came round a bit.

We were in Gion. Gion is the geisha District in Kyota, only they don’t call them geisha, there is a regional dialect difference and they are called geiko. Gion is situated between Shijo Avenue, the Yashaka Shrine and the Kamo River. It was quite early and the area being full of restaurants seemed as though it would come alive later on in the evening. We never expected to see any geiko. Geiko are highly skilled entertainers and not prostitutes. Training to be a geiko normally lasts about 5 years and starts between the ages of 15 to 20. Kyoto is famed for its very precise and traditional training.an

Avi Lugasi, who runs a travel company in Kyoto states, “Generally speaking, paparazzi is the name of the game,” says Lugasi, adding that tourists should keep in mind that the geisha they see are usually on their way to work and not being paid by the tourism board as some local mascot. “Geisha are aware that they are a special and unique aspect of the Japanese culture and subject to interest so it is a part of their lives, but people need to respect them too.”

Walking the streets with the slight possibility of seeing a geiko was really exciting but also felt as though we were part of a pack of paparazzi.

What we didn’t realise until retrospectively was that 5. 45pm is the best time to catch geiko in Gion as this is the time they go out to their first clients. Of course we did see them and stealthily took photos in the least obtrusive way possible.

To be honest Pete and I felt like we had set foot onto a film set. Everyone has heard of geisha but to see them up close is altogether another experience. Then I thought of lots of questions about the whole geisha/geiko culture came into my head so I went down the rabbit warren of Google.

First question googled was why do they wear white face makeup. The consensus seems to be that this came about when they originally performed in candlelight, the more porcelain looking the face the more their expressions were picked up. I did want to know if this is something young girls want to do but couldn’t get a conclusive answer. Overall it just all seems completely other-worldly.

A traditional eating place in the Gion area.
Another first we had when we ambled round Gion was our first sighting of a cat.

We met a woman taking her pet cat for a walk with a lead. She said her cat was 16 years old and was called Emerald and one of 7 cats she looked after at home. She seemed genuinely surprised when we told her hers was the first cat we had seen after being 2 weeks in the country. We showed her pictures of our cats and had a bit of a chat. It was again very odd and quite a bit out there.

Oh no not another shrine…….although in truth with the number of shrines in Japan it is hard not to see one at every turn. This one is called the Yasaka Shrine, a Shinto one. On the steps there many young people in traditional costume posing… A lot!

The water from the fountain is famous for making the heart and body beautiful and is apparently regularly frequented by the geikos.

Inside we met an old Japanese man who said he had lived in the UK for some years, lecturing at Kings College London on semantics. The conversation went back and forth, inevitably about Brexit and why don’t we like Scottish people in England etc.

So then he gets out a well creased bit of paper written in English, some Japanese and crossings out. He read it through and was asking is this right can I call someone who has a French father and a Japanese mother a half blood, so we had quite a debate as to why you couldn’t really say that. By this point I felt really tired and wasn’t quite getting it, but later I realised we had, had quite a debate on semantics which is why I think he left us with a bit of a spring in his step, he had, had the opportunity to do what he enjoyed best – arguing about the nuances of language.

We realised beyond the free tapas that we hadn’t eaten and it was getting very late. I had read that the Kyoto train station has a whole floor of places to eat, with varying degrees of expense. When we arrived in the morning we had left through a side entrance. Coming to the front of the station, particularly at night was truly a sight to behold. It was like something from a sci-fi film and the scale of everything was gigantic.