京都府: Geisha @ Kiyomizu Temple (Higashiyama東山)

Date: Saturday, 12th April 2008 (Late Morning)

After Nara visits, we proceeded to Kyoto to visit Kiyomizu Temple located at Higashiyama. When it comes to Kyoto, everyone knows that it was once city of Japan and also a place born with many professional 'Geisha'.

Higashiyama 東山 (the eastern part of Kyoto) is located at the west end of the Higashiyama Mountain Range. As early as the middle of the 14th century, many shrines, temples and aristocrats' villas were built in this area, where a variety of architecture and gardens, artistic and cultural masterpieces such as paintings, crafts and many artistic activities, such as flower arrangement (ikebana), the tea ceremony (sado) and Noh performances, flourished and developed in this area.

This place normally gets crowded over the weekends. To enter Kiyomizu Temple, we need to walk up/down the steep and narrow roads - buses or coaches that comes by must be skilled drivers, no joke heee!!! Picture above - I quietly captured a photo of Mom sneaking there to drink the water ka ka ka!!!

Along the road-side (both left and right), I saw plenty of souvenir gifts shops (all kinds). These shops allowed testers, we have tasted their muaci (red bean, black sesame and many other flavours) and green tea mixed with cherry ice-cream - yum yum!! I bought some souvenirs too. Our tour guide 盈盈 informed us that no matter how much we have eaten, we must never say it is good, we must say it oppositely.... then, the owners will let us try more (it is part of their culture).... ka ka ka!

Other than sightseeing and souvenir shoppings, we also have a chance to take pictures with Michael, a Geisha. This session was pre-arranged by tour guide (also part of the package) and only our group can take pictures with her.... we took as many as we can :-)

It's lunch time! And, we had lunch at a restaurant nearby. I remembered next to it is a "Hello Kitty" gift shop - made our eyes grows big ka ka ka!

We were at Kiyomizu Temple for just an hour and a half. Hmmm, though it is short but it was very enjoying :-) With that, we ended our sights-seeing in Kansai 關西 and moved on to Chubu 中部.