Gion at dusk: old lanes, teahouses & geiko lore

Gion by day is a pretty district full of people taking photos. Gion at dusk is a different place: the day crowd has gone, the lanterns outside the ochaya have just come on, and the stone lane of Hanamikoji returns to its real proportions.

Two and a half hours walking slowly past century-old wooden machiya, along the Shirakawa canal under its willows, into lanes the daytime crowd hides. Your guide tells you the part the roadside plaque doesn't: how an ochaya actually operates, why a stranger can't simply walk in, the difference between geiko and maiko, how many years the training takes, and why this is a profession rather than a performance staged for visitors.

Etiquette comes with it — the thing Kyoto has had to put up warning signs about: don't block the lane, don't touch, don't push a camera into the face of someone on their way to work. If someone does pass on their way to an appointment, you'll know how to behave. The tour does NOT promise a geiko sighting — nobody can promise that, and anyone who does is selling you something they don't have.