GEISHA! GEISHA! GEISHA!

4/23

While it wasn't exactly a gorgeous day out, it at least wasn't raining today, so I hopped on a train to Nara, a village close to Kyoto that was the first capital of Japan and thus has several lovely old sights.  I think it's possible that the reason these sights survived the war was because they were located in such a small town that it didn't seem worth bombing, but that's pure conjecture.

Nara is what I call an ooh-ahh-out place.  Awesome, incredible and absolutely worth your time, but only as a daytrip as can be seen in a few hours, maximum.  One of the best examples of ooh-ahh-outs is Pisa, if that helps give you a better idea of what I'm talking about.

First was Kofuku-ji, a fairly large temple complex area, with three and five storied pagodas.

Then through the Nandaimon Gate, guarded by two giant statues, even though they look like paintings behind the nets:

All the people you see in yellow hats are Japanese schoolchildren, here on field trips.  A group of them from Osaka, in elementary school and brown hats, came up to me for help on a project and asked me my name, where I was from, if I'd seen Todai-ji and what I thought the most surprising thing about Japan was.  They were cute but didn't seem overly excited at my response to the last question: the cold.

To the largest wooden building in the world, Todai-ji:

Which contains a giant gold/bronze alloy Buddha:

It also has a supporting beam with a hole in it the size of one of Buddha's nostrils that people try to crawl through for good luck:

Deer Warnings:

For my last stop in Nara, I'd planned on going to the Isuien Garden but it cost something like $6 but, if you knew about it, you could go to a teahouse next door that overlooked it, from which point you could see everything and just buy something there.  I got the cheapest thing on the menu; Japanese tea (matcha green tea) and dry candies.  The tea was horrible- shockingly bitter, and the candies, as far as I could tell, were just balls of powdered sugar, so were too sweet, but the view was lovely, even if these idiots are blocking part of it in my picture:

I got back to Kyoto and still had lots of energy so I decided that since it was a Friday afternoon, it would be a good time to go geisha hunting in Gion, the traditional geisha part of Kyoto, which is especially famous for its geisha.

It was a great area and I really enjoyed walking around it and seeing all the narrow streets and alleyways and old buildings (or, more likely, old-looking ones) but after about two hours, I still hadn't seen any geisha in full costume, so I gave up in defeat and ran after these girls to get a picture, hoping they were maiko, apprentice geisha.  It's highly unlikely that they were, and were probably just wearing kimonos because they'd been to a special temple or something that day.  Kimono are worn here traditionally and/or ceremonially, so when you see older women wearing kimono, it doesn't necessarily mean anything except that that's what they're comfortable in, but when you see young women wearing one, it's a bit more meaningful and means they might have visited a temple or sacred sight that day.  Also, the pink kimono was the prettiest one I saw in all my time in Japan.

Defeated, I still continued to walk around a bit, just wandering, looking more at the architecture and enjoying the lack of rain (though it was still a bit cold), when suddenly, out of a random doorway, a geisha appeared. 

I don't think I can explain to you how excited I was; it was like seeing a unicorn.  It made me wildly happy and I had to try to contain my giddiness as I asked her for a picture.  She obliged, and I continued walking, fully satisfied.

Suddenly, again appearing out of nowhere, another geisha, looking almost identical to the previous one, came rushing out of a doorway.  I caught her as she rushed away, and then got her to stop for a moment for a picture on her slower way back.

I couldn't believe it- I'd spent almost two hours looking for geisha without success and then had seen two in three minutes!  About two minutes later, a third geisha ran by me.  Three geisha in five minutes.  I was floating on air.

For dinner, I found a cheap Japanese fast-food/diner style place where I got a large bowl of rice topped with sauteed onions and very thin and relatively fatty strips of beef, accompanied by a small bowl of soup and cold tea for about $4-5.  It was really good, and the onion/beef mixture reminded me of French cooking flavors in a favorable way.