Geisha spotting in Gion

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Our first day in Kyoto has shown us that there is much, much more to Japan than just Tokyo. Kyoto has a very laid back feel and it's steeped in history so there was lots of exploring to do. Junko, our guide, met us at the hotel and took us to our first temple of the day. Kyoto has a whopping 1400 temples and shrines according to our taxi driver yesterday and everywhere you turn you bump into one! The temples we visited today had beautiful buildings and even lovelier gardens - very tranquil and calming.

We also visited Gion, an old quarter of Kyoto that's the best place for seeing Geisha as they head to their private parties. We didn't expect to see any as we walked along the quiet streets at about 3pm but to our complete surprise, a lovely geisha lady came tottering down the street right in front of us. I tried to sneak a photo but it was difficult not to look obvious. The whole geisha spotting experience was reminiscent of trying to sopt a rare animal in the wild. It sounds a bit daft but apparently it's a dying art so we felt quite privileged to see her.

Junko took us through back alleys and down side streets to some fabulous quirky places all through the day. The food market was probably my favourite - things that we had never seen before. Loads of fish for sale here too so the smells were pretty intense but it was all part of the experience.

After locating a small eatery called Rakaru that served something call omurice (omelette with rice - geddit?) which was cheap and tasty, we wandered down a few more streets and managed to get completely lost! It took ages to work out where we were on the map and then some serious legwork to get us to a bus route. Once we were on the bus we relaxed but in the process we went way past our stop. So our already tired legs had a lot more walking to do to get us back. Thankfully Japan seems to be a really safe place day and night and the warm evenings are perfect for a night time stroll, so it wasn't all bad. I guess if you don't get lost every so often, you don't get to know the area so well, right?

On a down note today though was that we lost little Jish. Until then he had been living in a pocket on the side of our day packs but we were messing around with him on the bus this morning and somehow he managed to escape from his pocket before we got to our stop. I'm pretty gutted about it but hanging on to the distant hope that we can call the bus company tomorrow and maybe someone handed him in. Alas there were lots of school kids jumping on and off the buses today so I can't help feeling Jish might be living it up in a new Japanese home :-((

Our guide Junko was just lovely and we were thrilled to bits when she offered to take us on another tour on Thursday! I'll et you know how we get on. Not sure what the plan is for tomorrow. I guess we'll just make it up as we go :-)

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Comments

[Linda]

Nooooooooo!
I hope Jish is just having a little adventure of his own and will join you again soon!