A Glimpse of a Geisha

'"You’ll never just stumble across one,” they said, “It doesn’t work like that.”

We never listened, and so we set out on our rented bicycles weaving our way through streets of Kyoto, savoring the unusually muted nature that nightfall had brought.

Perhaps it was a side effect of the sake that we’d been swallowing with grimacing faces but the two of us were optimistic that we’d spot a geisha. It was now or never. Tomorrow’s offering was a bullet train to Tokyo.

We crawled along the lanes of Gion, Kyoto’s most famous geisha district. During the day these narrow lanes were bubbling as hundreds of locals and tourists meandered along, admiring the traditional wooden buildings and centuries old paving, dipping in and out of teahouses and pottery stores.

Now all that could be heard was the clicks of the wheels on our bikes and the occasional suppressed giggle whenever we briefly made eye contact. I’m not sure how long the excitement kept us cycling up and down those streets, but eventually we stopped after realizing we’d come without water and were now out of breath.

The two of us leaned on our bikes at the end of one of the lanes debating whether or not we should call it a night, the adventure in itself had been fun enough. It was then that a door nudged open further down the lane, an old woman’s head popped out, looked both ways, and then then the door swung open fully.
I pointed, not as subtly as I wish I had, over Zoe’s shoulder and mouthed “Behind you, the geishas are behind you.” We saw three of them scurrying along the street, carefully holding on to their colorful kimonos, their faces strikingly whiter than they appeared in movies or in pictures.

They took very small steps. That was what really stood out as they waddled along, wafting their faces with flowery hand-fans, it was as though a small piece of rope bound their ankles beneath their kimonos.

And then they were gone, ducking quickly inside another traditional building further down the street. We stared after them much longer than they had ever been in sight, geishas have a mesmerizing effect on you like that.

It was only research after the event that led us to realise that it wasn’t all that difficult to meet a geisha in Kyoto, as long as you were prepared to pay for the privilege. We never knew that and as we crept through those empty streets it really did feel like we were chasing something sacred, something special, and for that reason our discovery was special, if only to us.