A Favorite Japan Adventure

Hi there. Hope everyone's enjoying their weekend. 

Today I have some more photos from my Japan trip to share. Today's grouping is from one of my favorite little adventures on my journey. While in Kyoto we visited one of the Gion districts, which are the old historic districts. The area was a fascinating collection of architecture. This is how Kyoto looked before all the modern buildings were constructed. It is also an area of tea houses and private clubs

 The streets are narrow and there are these little alleys with courtyards at their end tucked into many places.

And you might ask why we visited in the evening, and not during the day.

And I can tell you why.

Because we were hoping to pass one of the areas famous citizens while they were on their way to work.

These historic districts of Kyoto are where the Geishas live.

You can see it was a wet night, which decreased our chances of seeing any Geishas since the rain would ruin their make up. But we explored, undeterred.

(These are a few of our kids and the woman standing on the left is Deb, one of my coworkers and friends who also went on the trip in the upper photo.)

This particular school trip hadn't seen any Geishas for quite a few years, but we weren't going to let that deter us either.

I stepped onto one of these side streets to take a photo of the architecture, and one of my other co-workers joined me. And low and behold, we snapped our photos and then realized that we had 2 Geisha's walking towards us.

We just stood there in disbelief as they walked right by us. When they got close were so absorbed we didn't even bother to snap any photos.

But wait. It got even better.

Back up on the road where the rest of our group was, we had a woman in a kimono and make up walk past us. 

Then we followed behind her and came up to an old building with and open gate leading into the courtyard.

And then she and another geisha came out of the courtyard and got into a waiting taxi.

 How cool and exciting was that? 

Let me show you a few more photos of the outer street along the main thoroughfare. We had to walk down this street in order to head back to the subway.

 And to answer a few questions from comments today.

First of all, I think many Japanese people speak a few words of English, and a few speak much better. In the cities there is some English signage, but outside of the city, there is not any. It is interesting how  outside of the city we were the rare non-Japanese people, but in the big cities, although most people were Japanese or Chinese (as they are MANY Chinese visitors) , there are more European or European descent looking folks. 

And yes, I do know how LUCKY I am to work in a school district that values sending their teachers on these trips. This entire trip cost me only around $300, and that was just my personal spend money for gifts and trinkets I bought myself. It was a really amazing trip, and my fellow travellers, students and teachers, were fantastic people.

That's all for me today.  I have some catching up from yesterday to get to, but I was out all day running errands and now I am ready for bed, so I will stop tomorrow when I am being lazy at home while it rains.

Thanks everyone for visiting.