Our tour bus picked us up at our hotel and dropped the group off about a mile away from a place called Gion Corner, where we were to see the performance. The walk to the geisha performance was probably the highlight of the whole deal for most of us. We walked right through Gion, the geisha district, both going to and coming from the performance, and the walk back to the bus was at night so everything was all lit up and really beautiful, especially with all the cherry trees in bloom.
All the way to performance, we saw posters advertising what we thought we were going to see. And we did actually see a little bit of traditional geisha arts.
Japanese tea ceremony - also expected.
Yeah, to say we just didn't get it is the understatement of a lifetime. The geisha stuff took all of about ten minutes and the rest of the hour was filled with this other stuff. It was interesting to see these forms of entertainment that are so unique to the Japanese culture, but I think it was really lost on almost every last American in the group.
Fortunately, the evening was salvaged by our traditional Japanese dinner.
This was Ashley's, complete with sashimi and tempura and a nice steak.
This was my gluten-free version. Steak and veggies, no tempura, different kind of sashimi, no whatever that is in her yellow bowl, no sauce and no green tea-covered jelly dessert. Instead I got some yummy fruit, salad without dressing and french fries, of all things. That's another thing the Japanese seem to like - french fries. They're everywhere. They're on every buffet, even breakfast. Very strange.
The green leaf in the upper left corner is actually the lid to your own personal grill that they came around and lit for us. After letting it heat up for a couple of minutes, you remove the lid and grill your own meat and veggies to your liking. It was really fun and a nice way to end a busy day in Kyoto.
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