A Day of Indulgence

I’m blaming it all on Fuji-san.

I woke up this morning and it was a Fuji Day AGAIN! I started out my day feeling so spoiled, that I guess it just spilled over into the rest of my day. For lunch I treated myself to oden (おでん) from the Sunkus around the corner (a convenience store chain here in Japan). I could easily justify this purchase, because oden is cheap and my favorite things are healthy anyways: thick yummy slices of daikon radish, savory rolls made of cabbage leaves, little chewy bundles of konnyaku, and a boiled egg, all served up in a simple broth with karashi (hot Japanese mustard) on the side.

No, my self-indulgence did not stop there. In the afternoon I fell victim to the siren call of our neighborhood Baskin-Robbins and to a scoop of lemon berry cheesecake. I have already tried denying my guilt, but there is evidence of my weakness. In my defense, that is a kiddy cone that you see in my hand. At least I exercised that much self-control.

Again no, the indulgence did not stop. This evening Hubby and I went out with our friends the “M”s to a dinner held at the Tokyo American Club where the entertainment was provided by 4 geisha. They began the evening by performing several dances done to live music.

Then we started our meal, and they walked around the room serving sake to the guests.

When the desert was served they called for volunteers to play a couple of different games where the loser had to drink a small cup of sake. The first game was called Tora Tora (“tora” means tiger in Japanese), and it involved 2 geisha on either side of a screen who would strike a pose–either the pose of a mother, a hunter, or a tiger. A hunter pose beat a tiger pose, a tiger pose beat a mother pose, and a mother pose beat a hunter pose. The second game was “Rock, Paper, Scissors”, which is known as Janken–Pon (じゃんけんぽん) in Japanese.

The history of geisha dates back to the seventh century. There were geisha working in ever city, the most famous being Kyoto. Today, a maiko (apprentice) beings her training after finishing her compulsory education at age 16. She studies classical Japanese manners, speech and other forms of etiquette, and cultural arts such as flower arrangement, tea ceremony, calligraphy, koto harp, shamisen (a type of Japanese banjo) and the taiko drum for 4 – 5 years. At the end of this intensive training, she becomes a geisha.

As recently as the 1950s there were around 1,000 geisha working in Asakusa (an area in Tokyo) at the more than fifty ryotei, which were discrete, private restaurants usually found in the back streets of commercial areas. Today only nine ryotei remain in operation and somewhere around 50 geisha are registered.

Interestingly, one of the geisha (Norie) that performed tonight was born in Los Angeles and returned to Japan when she was 11. Her grandmother was one of the most successful geisha of the 1940s and 1950s.

All in all, it was a wonderfully indulgent day. Now I can fall asleep with my belly full of good food and my head filled with fun memories.

{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }

Anonymous November 13, 2007 at 11:17 am: What a blast. You’d better hope it’s cloudy for the next few days and Fuji stays hidden…
FMMM

David November 13, 2007 at 11:52 am: Your favorite uncle wants to know how much of that sake you enjoyed…

gleek November 13, 2007 at 2:26 pm: WOW! what an honor to have met those women and seen them perform. i’m sure it’s gotta be a rarity. i have been interested in the geisha traditions and culture for a long time. i would have loved to have been there. thanks for sharing!

Fuji Mama's mama November 13, 2007 at 11:28 pm: By the way, what IS that last picture?

Fuji Mama November 13, 2007 at 11:33 pm: It’s the back of one of the geisha (the green thing is her obi)–I was playing with light exposure.

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