Our tourist boat sailed down the central river of Tokyo and stopped near Ginza, a high-end district with a walking street paved with the likes of Gucci, Versace, Prada and Louis Vuitton.
A friend and I moved from the dock towards the street with dozens of other tourists. We noticed a woman in elaborate, traditional robes, her hair worn up. She walked with great poise. Her aged and dignified face showed that she had probably been a young woman during the pre-World War II Japanese imperial glory.
We wondered whether she was a geisha, but a Japanese man we had befriended on the boat laughed at us, as my friend whipped out her camera with excitement. “That’s not a geisha,” he said, “It’s only 10 in the morning! The geishas aren’t out yet. She’s just a rich old woman. Go to Kyoto for real geishas.”
Like a few other tourists from our boat, we assumed she was a geisha simply because she wore the traditional Japanese dress and walked gracefully.
