The Googled Geisha.

Sun 2nd October 

    One of today's miracles of science

allegedly is Google maps and directions which even an idiot can see that it is about as useless as a chocolate fire guard.It is the equivalent of an idiot's guide to being dumb.Get a map and use common sense.I sat on Fri evening planning a way to the Kyoto film studio and within five mins it gave me five different ways of getting there.Two of them had me taking miles to get there.I consulted my paper map and had it figured out within seconds and when I headed out on Saturday morning it took me a whole half hour to get there from Kyoto station.As you will later learn Lady Watson used it to do her tour of the geisha district and was given some funny looks from the locals.

           After going our separate ways I headed out on a local train to Hanzomon,arriving into a sleepy suburban town where apart from the busy road through the town life went on at a nice leisurely pace.Walking to the studio took me about fifteen minutes,so much for google's directions.

          The film studio is also a theme park concentrating mostly on period pieces as it was mapped out like seventeenth century Japan with wooden buildings all around.

      There were demonstrations of sword fighting with the usual over exaggerated acting and shouting finished of with Ernie Wise styles of dying.Before you came into the outside set up there was a shop where you could get done up in the style of a samurai or if you were female a geisha complete with a whitened face.After you were tarted up you could walk about the sets strutting your stuff. But of course all at a price.

         All these sets still get used to make tv programmes and films.I entered into the house that is used in a medieval type drama complete with accessories and even period cooking utensils.

       I moved on over a period wooden bridge which with a few changes can be used as any bridge over many hundreds of years.It didn't even have water under it.Ah well that's show business .

        After another short walk I came to the photo shop where I decided to go in and have myself done up and photographed as a samurai.I donned the gear including a hairpiece(which got rid of my gray hair)wore the swords and had my photo taken.Let's just say that'll keep the grandkids away from the gas fire.

        I continued around the studio till I came to the Ninja show and it was just about to start so I made my way in to watch the the spectacle and I wasn't disappointed.There was some story about a man with some gold being relieved of it by some ninja and then being helped by a wandering hero.The story evolved into the hero being attacked by various demons but the audience enjoyed it.It was just like a pantomime with added ninja acrobats with once again the typical oriental overacting.

            Moving on I made my way into the main building where all the anime was and of course Power Rangers which had been filmed there.That definitely took me back to the early nineties when my kids were daft on them.

       Lunch was next on agenda with a Japanese Hamburg steak complete with pickled veg and miso soup(Japanese standard dish served everywhere and with every meal)the only downside was that it was served on a pile of fries.

        After souvenirs were bought I headed back for the train back into 

Kyoto.

      After finding out Lady Watson was still geisha hunting I arranged to meat her in the Gion district of Kyoto and duly made my way across the subway system which is not as easy as Tokyo's.I eventually met up with her and headed for the Yasaka shrine and I have never been so annoyed about a religious place in all my puff for as soon as I walked through the shrine gates I was confronted by a crab stick stall and just a little bit further in I came across other stalls and thought how dreadful that these stalls were allowed to be in the grounds of a holy place.Now I'm not religious and don't believe in a supreme being but I found myself asking where was Jesus to get rid of this lot.

   

  When I went further in I was confronted by hundreds of people milling about and a lot of them were in Japanese costume which was a barrel of laughs as most of them were speaking Chinese.By this time Lady Watson was using the Google direction finder on her IPhone trying to find the tea house she had planned to visit for her tea ceremony.Everytime she walked in the designated direction it would tell her to turn round in the opposite direction.This happened a few times before I asked her to try a map which went down like the Titanic and led us to parting company with her using her phone to find her tearoom and me using a map to find the nearest subway station.She eventually found her tearoom whereas I found a nice shower and a beer waiting for me at our shack.

         Peace was declared and we ended up would you believe in a Tapas bar.It's easier to eat with

chopsticks.

        Sayonara.