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Despite all its modern advances, the Japanese society has managed to preserve its links with its cultural and historical heritage. During our trip, we saw many Japanese women going about their business dressed in their traditional garb. The first such sighting was in Himeji during our walk to the Himeji Castle. We encountered several groups of Japanese women dressed in their kimonos off to their engagement.

The best sightings however, were reserved for Kyoto. We encountered our first geisha in the Gion district of Kyoto. It was quite an exciting moment when we saw a "real live" geisha ! But we weren't fast enough to pull our cameras out to photograph the fleeting sight. We decided to explore one of the streets off the main street in Gion when we encountered geisha-central ! A quick decision was made to just park ourselves at one of the street corners, cameras poised to see how many geishas we could spot and hopefully photograph discretely without invading their privacy. We saw large Mercedes Benzes plus countless cabs pull up to ferry the geishas off to their engagement for the evening.

The Potoncho area of Kyoto is a narrow lane by the side of the Kamo River which is lined by numerous restaurants and bars. We came here to try and catch a glimpse of some more geishas and we were lucky to see two. Being able to see the local Japanese continue to practice their traditions in public was a real highlight of the trip. The only people in traditional dress that we were not able to see on our trip were samurais ! :)

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