Well, this blog entry is not about those train ads -- just wanted to make that clear. The train advertisements only explain why my title for this blog has dots in.between.the.words. (See them now?). I have been seeing a lot of the Sony ads while riding the train and theirs is one of the ads that I rather enjoy looking at. Not too many words (sometimes none), just their new product and their slogan, "like.no.other". So, I thought I'd copy Sony's style for this post's title and put more dots in there than necessary. (Weird? Not really? That's what I thought.)
Anyway, this post is about my first time to see a real-life geisha; thus, the title "my.first.time". I have seen a lot of fake geishas before -- women dressed up and made-up as one who go around Kyoto for a day -- but, despite having been to Kyoto, oh, so many times, I have never seen a real one. That was, until a few weeks ago.
I went to Kyoto to take a few photos of the place at the tail end of autumn. Next to Spring, Kyoto is, arguably, best visited during Autumn. So, there I was minding my own business, when, right after stepping out of the Kyoto Central Station, I saw the geisha. Well, she could have been a lower rank-maiko (geisha apprentice) -- but I didn't care, I was just really excited and felt really lucky to have finally seen one. Her make-up, hair and kimono was so exquisite, that, if she just stopped moving for a while, she could have passed off as a wax sculpture or a giant geisha doll.
I later found out that, that day, the geishas were doing some green tea preparation shows in public. If I had only known that before hand, I would have ditched my plan to do an Autumn-shrine-and-Kyoto-visit and would just have searched for all the geishas I could find. Anyway, 'nough talking. Here are some more pictures of the geisha and then some...
fake ones...
Happy New Year Everyone! Wish you all the best in the coming year!
4 comments:
The maiko's name is Suzuha and she is from Gion Kobu. She became a geisha end last year :) you were pretty lucky meeting her :D
Thanks. I did feel quite lucky seeing her that day. And now, with that additional info, I feel luckier =). Hope that that will be the start of many more geisha sightings to come. And oh, I couldn't help but notice, are you somekind of a Geisha "expert". You seem to know quite a lot about them. Cheers! =)
I wouldn't call myself an expert at all, there are other pple around the globe that know far more about the geisha's world than I do, but they do are a passion for me :D and i try to know as much as possible about their daily life etc.
I hope too that it will be the start for you for many many more sightings of geishas (especially if you will post the pictures here ;) ) and living in Japan must be great, one of my future goals in life (:
Hello smr, I too am a bit curious about geishas. Unfortunately, tho, I don't have that much opportunity to further pursue this curiosity.
In any case, I'll make sure to post more pictures here if I'll be lucky again to see more Geishas. Spring is coming so that means more visits to Kyoto and Gion. You should visit Japan too. I'm sure you'll love it. BTW, nice Flickr Pics!
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