The Higashiyama area sits at the foot of the mountains and is at the eastern edge of Kyoto City. It’s pretty rustic and secluded in some parts, but in the lanes leading up to Kiyomizu Temple, becomes a lot more commercialized with numerous restaurants, souvenir and pottery shops on both sides of the lanes as we’ll see later on.
The streets were a little confusing to follow, and that each public map that we saw seemed to be drawn differently to scale, and weren’t always oriented in the right cardinal directions. But we got our bearings by following the Yasaka Pagoda in the near distance and walked in that general direction.
You can’t tell from these pictures, but it was freezing cold despite it being mid-morning at about 9:30 AM already.
Upon turning a corner, we were surprised to see not one but four Maikos all immaculately dressed and just ahead of us! We weren’t expecting to see Geikos of course, but had been keeping our fingers crossed to be able to see a Maiko later in the evening, as the travel guides noted that you’d still need a lot of luck and your best chances typically lie in trying to catch them in the late afternoon in the district as they go to entertain their clients. It was fabulously good luck to see not one but four.:)
I can only imagine the commotion the four would have caused if there were more people about. Being able to see and watch the Maikos for all of 10 minutes was the tourist-y highlight of the day for me (foodie experiences are in a different category altogether LOL).
With the Maikos behind us, we continued up the lanes towards Kiyomizu-dera Temple.
Continued in the next post.:)
wa! so lucky!!
Yes, definitely lucky, especially to have seen them in general seclusion.
In one of the photos above, it looks like that large Toyota is poised to run down Ling as she shoots footage of the Maiko!
Bud; LOL yeah. Thankfully, that van was stationary though. :)
maiko hensin, or fake geisha. She is an ordinary girl of whom has visited a “transformation studio’ so that she can be dressed like this for a few hours in order to take photos. Not a real maiko [apprentice geisha] here, sorry. :[
Don’t worry though, henshin are SOO common during the day, many tourists come to kyoto every year, some come just to see the maiko & do henshin. Its like how u can pay to dress up as a cowboy in those old western towns. Its a fun attraction, but henshin shouldn’t be confused with the real thing :]
flicker search “maiko henshin” & flicker search “maiko gion” to see the difference.
Ah – thanks for the note.=)