“She danced like one of those things they put outside of carwashes, the tubes with faces and arms attached to a fan. She had no mystery, no allure, no skill, no art, and her lunatic visage was so off-putting you were heartened by a sudden new-found certainty: an entire culture had realized that keeping your tongue extended like a basset hound with heat stroke was unbecoming, and unlikely to be repeated except as a sarcastic reference in Instagram selfies.”
— James Lileks reviews Miley CyrusOne more cherry blossom
Culture for its own sake
Just in case you plan to set up a backyard saké brewery, here’s how you go about it, courtesy of the folks at Gekkeikan Okura Sake Museum.
Readable full-size version here. The museum is a fun little side trip, by the way, with a gift shop and tasting bar. The “retro” saké they only sell there is sweeter than most current products; several bottles made it into our luggage, along with their plum wine.
Next trip, we’ll have to visit the Suntory Yamazaki beer and whisky museums, as Jeffrey Friedl did here and here.
Specialized vocabulary
This is a hakama, most commonly seen today on martial artists and miko:
Take one drink if you picked "tiger"
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.
Not a cherry blossom picture
Sometimes all those white and pink blossoms filling the trees get a bit overwhelming, and you need to turn away, look down, and relax your eyes.
More blossoms in Arashiyama...
Not all blossoms grow on trees...
The Maiko dinner at Gion Hatanaka is not cheap, but is definitely worth it. If you’re not a fan of traditional Kyoto cuisine, however, plan on stopping somewhere for more modern fare later.
(I believe that the girl in white has graduated to full geiko status, having reached age 20; the other is still a maiko)
The hidden cost of cherry blossoms
Fortunately, there’s only the one.
