A Night in Gion | Kyoto | Japan Travels

I remember our visit to Gion happened on a spectacular evening. It had just finished raining during the day and as the lights were lit up for the night its reflection off the drenched ground dazzled the streets. The fact that Kyoto was already so pretty with lanterns decorating the streets with a soft glow, added with that extra bit of sparkle just made everything look picture perfect. Only – and this is pretty upsetting – we couldn’t take pictures because the battery in our camera had been fully exhausted.

Let me just go on a small tangent here to talk about something I found strange. I am actually really cautious about the battery in our camera and made it a habit to recharge it fully every night during our trip in Japan. When we went to visit a shrine there was this really interesting statue of a dog. Kind of like a Doberman. When I tried to take a photo of it the camera kept turning off. I figured I must have left the camera on video mode until the battery died. When I turned it back on to take a photo of a nearby tree just to test the camera, it succeeded taking a photo of the tree not once but twice. But each time I tried to take a photo of the dog statue it would always turn off. After a few failed attempts it just stopped working completely. It was pretty spooky. Did I do something wrong to upset some Japanese custom I didn’t know about?

Ok, back to Gion. A long period of afternoon rain shepherded us inside shopping malls and shopping arcades (no surprises there!). Just to bore my male readers a little, we visited this really cool and cheap make-up place with legit make-up brands. If you girls know the mascara brand Majolica Majorca, you’ll know when I say it is hard to find outside of Japan! One store sells them here in Auckland but it is always out of stock. We found lots in Gion! And boy did we stock up. Fo’ realz yo’. It’s mascara that adds fibres at the tip of your lashes and makes them uber long!

Other stores we visited had mostly been souvenir stores (with very high quality products - bought myself a leather wallet!), and also lots of snack stores that sold sweets like Dango. To bore my male readers even more, my friends and I also came across this really sweet underwear store. It’s called Risa Magli and can be found just about anywhere in Japan. The underwear there is quite something else. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like walking inside a cup cake shop and going aww, look! and pointing at everything.

Now to the highlight of the evening! We entered what was known as the Geisha alley in Gion. You cannot come to Gion without visiting any of its Geisha alleys. Some people want to have a glimpse of these ancient entertainers but I think even a glimpse of the alley in which they reside is just as beautiful. Early in the evening we spotted a couple of Geishas off to work but because of the rain they disappeared pretty quickly. We hadn’t seen them since. Too much of something is never good anyway, heh. Their exotic look was just so amazing to look at and not to mention how gracefully they also strolled.

In the Geisha alley we hunted down a quiet lounge bar for some drinks and we eventually came across one that had a board outside displaying a picture of fishes. Suddenly we forgot we wanted drinks and just wanted to eat sashimi. Screw the Fukushima Radiation – we wanted raw fish!

The sitting arrangements were on tatami mats which I was pretty excited about. Something I thought was absolutely clever was how they posted the menu on the wall. As you eat and drink, the menu is practically plastered onto your eyeballs and makes you want to order some more. Which we did. All night. While tipsy.

Menu on the wall.

Excuse the first picture below. The first dish is supposed to show an incredible assortment of tempura but because it was the first dish served and we were quite famished, it was gone before I could even think about taking a picture.

Fortunately for us, there was alcohol in the restaurant that we could still enjoy – even though the shop served some pretty hardcore liquor. We were on holiday and no one was driving, so all of us could forget about staying sober just for one night.

I admit that we may have enjoyed it a bit too much. At the end of the night we came out with a pretty hefty bill. Sashimi is fricken expensive! And because our logic was washed away with some liquor no one was there to tell us of our growing expenses. We probably knew, but then forgot, that each sashimi plate had been around NZ$50.

Gion was a great place to just let loose, spend some money and enjoy a great night. Just in case, maybe think about separating your taxi/transport cash from your wallet. And by the way, the fish was completely safe to eat despite all the rumours about radiation contaminated fish.

Peaces x :)