One of the drinking games at the maiko dinner is “Tora tora”, a variant of rock-paper-scissors where the players are hidden from each other by a screen, and step out miming a character: samurai beats tiger, tiger beats grandmother, grandmother beats samurai. We had a large group, but every time someone picked tiger, the other person had picked samurai.

Fortunately, they had non-alcoholic drinks available for when the kids lost.

When an even-smaller little girl lost a round, the honorable samurai who’d slain her tiger generously gave her the winner’s prize and took the drink instead.