Kyoto and its Geishas

Day 8

We woke up late and then together with Saori took train to Kyoto. Arrived around 5pm we went straight to the Kyoto old city district, called GION, where from 5 to 6 pm you could catch geisha if lucky. Normally this hour geisha or maiko (this is a name for young girls who are preparing to become geisha), are going out to work.

Juli somehow had a wrong idea what geisha does…no, she is not the one who sells sex for money, normally geisha is paid to be a company, to maintain a conversation or serve the guests at the restaurant. They are educated to entertain people and especially are hired for the business meetings. Geisha services are extremely expensive, so it is also kind of showing your status to the partners.

Anyway, the Gion area was extremely nice, kind of old Japanese city atmosphere, you feel really like in a story about ancient time, geisha and samurais. We saw some geisha girls, took some pictures in a real touristic spirit and felt like mission was completed for today haha

Then we went to see a night view of the city, went through old streets with typical houses where everything was conserved in a proper and clean shape….well, like almost everything in Japan :-D

After cultural program we felt like having a beer, and since it’s so expensive in Japan (in any bar is 5-6 euro/beer and in convenience store 1 -1.5 euro/can), we decided to follow old tradition, buy some beers in a shop and drink them sitting on a bench just by the river. So we had a river view, cheap beer and good conversation :-D (the picture is called “Botellon en Kyoto” :-D)

We met Saori’s friend, Jun, and went to a sushi restaurant, where the price for any plate (2 nigiri sushi or 4 maki sushi) was same – 100 yen (80 euro cents).

We ended up with 10 plates/each and all happy and satisfied took a train back to Saori’s place.