s of a geisha
With the Tokyo Olympics rescheduled to next year, all eyes are on Japan for 2021. Lucy Huxley shares her city highlights
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travelweekly.co.uk
had imagined doing many new and unusual things on my first trip to Japan, but playing rock- paper-scissors with a geisha wasn’t one of them. But there I was, in a Japanese tea house in the Asakusa district of Tokyo, eating raw fish, tofu and gingko nuts, and howling with laughter as my friends and I fell victim to the superior game-playing skills of a small, kimono-clad geisha.
Innocent-looking she may have been, but this geisha meant business. In between sips of Asahi beer, she beat each of us in turn, delighting in her victories. She appeared to be having as good a time as we were – and it made for a truly entertaining and memorable evening. It wasn’t quite what we were expecting when we booked a ‘dinner with a geisha’ experience to immerse ourselves in the local culture. While being served an authentic Japanese meal of pickled herring and other delights – much of which was hard to get down, I have to admit – we learnt all about the geisha training and way of life through an interpreter. She told us about
their appearance, their role and their love of music and dance, before the games began, sending us all into fits of giggles.
SUSHI TIME This was far from being the only cultural eye-opener on the trip. Elsewhere in Asakusa, we enrolled on a sushi-making class at the Chagohan Tokyo cookery school with grandmaster sushi chef Maasa and his wife Junko. The pair have created a small teaching cafe located down a narrow side street, complete with preparation tables and sushi knives. We learnt how to cool and flavour rice with kelp- infused vinegar, and then how to cut salmon, snapper and blue fin tuna to top our sushi rolls. We rolled, pinched and squeezed our rice into perfect sushi bites, added our respective topping, and found out how to make a rolled egg omelette, all of which we washed down with a gulp of Japanese spirit Shōchū (which tasted more shocking than Shōchū). ²
9 JULY 2020
DESTINATIONS TOKYO | ASIA
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