Day 13: Maiko Transformation

Today was one of the days I was really looking forward to. I had made a booking back home for a Maiko transformation (a Maiko is a apprentice Geiko, which roughly translates to Geisha). I had an appointment at 10 am at studio Aya, conveniently located in Gion, so close to our hotel.
We arrived a bit early, so we were let to a waiting area where they luckily offered free wifi. At 10am a young woman asked me to follow her to the changing and washing room. There are free lockers here, so if you come alone you do not have to worry about important belongings. The assistant handed me an underdress, a pair of tabi and a pair of slippers.

Once you've put everything on you proceed to the make-up room. As the name says your make-up will be applied here, your hair will be done as well. The make-up will take a lot of time, as a lot of layers will be applied.
It all starts with putting your hair in a hair net.

Next step is putting the white face paint on, it is applied both on your neck and face. You end up looking kind of like a ghost ;)

Next up is pink eye shadow and red lip paint, already looking a bit less like a ghost.

Now you're all ready! Just kidding. They will also put a wig on your head, using bits of your own hair to make it look more natural and secure it on your head. The inside of the wig is made like some kind of metal medieval helmet, and the whole thing is heavy, really heavy. Parts of your hair get combed on the wig and are spray painted black.

More layers of underclothing are now put on and you're finished in this room.

 Now you will go upstairs to pick out which kimono you'd like to wear. They have a lot of kimonos in all kinds of colors and motives. I had already made up my mind that I'd like a dark colored kimono as this makes the light make-up pop. I chose a really pretty dark blue one.

More layers are added to make the kimono fit right, and you get to choose a matching obi.

The whole finished outfit weighs a ton, is pretty hard to move in, and you will get warm in it. I was really glad I had booked an early session, cause today would be one of the hottest days I experienced during my stay in Japan.
Last on the list is picking out hair accessories, they will make a suggestion for the season, but you are allowed to choose whichever you like. I ended up picking the season suggestion because it matched the kimono.

Now you are really finished! At studio Aya you book a package before you arrive, I had booked the Nene plan. This plan includes indoor studio photos, a 30 minute outdoor photo shoot with a professional photographer, and 30 minutes of free outdoor time to take your own photos.
You start with the indoor shoot. You can choose 2 different poses, and as usual I managed to choose the 2 most difficult ones, but I think the final photos do pay off the trouble.

After the studio photos the outdoor photos were taken. Two ladies from the studio accompanied me through the streets of Gion, one to take photos and the other to assist the photographer and to adjust make-up or clothing. Walking around Gion normally isn't that hard, except now I could hardly move my legs, was wearing really high geta, and on top of that Gion has a variety of small slopes.

However, the effort does pay off and they shot some really nice pictures. Additionally, while taking photos some Japanese people stopped to look at me and give me some happy and approving gestures. One man even pulled over his car and jumped out to take some pictures.

Once the first 30 minutes outside passed we were handed a small map with nearby sights that would be nice photo backgrounds. We decided to go to a nearby shrine, as I was moving at a snails pace, and was a bit worried of the return walk. After a few photos at the shrine grounds I had the honor of going on the photo with a complete tour bus, but I didn't mind too much as we were finished pretty quickly anyways.

As we returned a bit early at Aya we were allowed to take some more photos in their cute backyard, as far as I've understood this is where you get to take photos if you do not book the outdoor plan.

Taking everything of also took a lot of time, and soap.

After some waiting I received my photos and a CD with all photos (I ordered this separately).
After leaving Aya we went to the Teramachi market, which is a big market mainly focused on food, but there are a lot of different stores in the neighborhood.

I didn't buy anything here, but we had a delicious meal. There were a couple of Japanese men trying to have a conversation with us, though it wasn't that successful they gifted my mom and me their folding fans, I thought it was pretty cute.

In one of the streets in front of the market I bought a nice, and cheap, yukata and matching obi.
Back at the hotel we collected our suitcases and took a taxi to the station to catch a bullet train. We got reserved seats from the ticket boot and took the bullet train to Tokyo.
In Tokyo we were staying at the Tokyo Plaza hotel, which is conveniently located between two train stations on the main Tokyo tracks.
We also ate our first conveyor belt sushi here, fun, delicious and cheap!

All photos can be found at my flickr page

Day 12: Shinkansen to Kyoto

Today we went to Kyoto, we used the shinkansen (bullet train) which travels from Osaka to Kyoto in just 15 minutes. The interior of the train kind of looks like an airplane, but as we had non-reserved seats we could pick where we wanted to sit. During the trip you can buy some candy and drinks from a trolley (on longer trips the trolley passes by multiple times).

My original plan was to take the bus from Kyoto station to our hotel. However, as we had quite a lot of luggage we decided to use a taxi (2 taxis actually, as everything did not fit in 1).

We checked in at the Apa Gion hotel, but as we were still too early to enter our room we stored our luggage there and went on our way to explore Kyoto.
Our first destination was the Golden Pavilion, as the name suggests it is a big gold building in a huge garden. The entrance is a bit confusing, you have to pay an entrance fee, but the fee that is on display is not the one you have to pay if you only want to see the pavilion (the actual fee is lower, and I'm not sure what the more expensive one is for). After paying you are handed a ticket, that you give back almost immediately again.

The Pavilion is right at the beginning of the garden, but you are send on the long route by staff. Being the nature loving people we joined a group of people just emerging from their garden walk and went straight to the Pavilion. We were pretty disappointed, the Pavilion was smaller than expected and just did not give us the wow vibe, so after taking some photos we left again to search for Mimuro, a kimono store I wanted to visit.

I had read about Mimuro online, as I was searching for a good place to buy a silk kimono. We had to search for a while, as there weren't that many route guides online, but we did find it eventually. Upon entering the shop we were enthusiastically greeted by an elderly woman, who showed us around on the ground floor. This level holds yukata including special yukatas for taller and/or bigger people.
As I was planning on buying a silk kimono we moved to the first floor. This floor is a lot bigger, with stacks of kimono everywhere. The shop lady explained what kinds of kimono were sold on this floor and in which price ranges. I explained that I would like a kimono for more formal occasions, thus she showed me a few furisode with shorter sleeves. While I was looking through the different colors and motifs another man showed a furisode with longer sleeves, but as this was even more formal (and I felt I wouldn't get that much wear out of it) so I decided to stick for the slightly less formal furisode.
I decided I wanted a pink kimono and found a beautiful salmon one whit a blue print at the bottom. The sales assistant showed me how to put on the kimono and what I needed to complete the outfit, which included a silk kimono where I settled for a nice red one. I ended up whit a huge pile of kimono items.
If you ever decide you want to buy a new kimono I would definitely advice to go to this shop!

We decided to return to the hotel to store my new purchases there and put our luggage in the room. The hotel is conveniently located bordering Gion, so we had decided to have dinner there. But, it seemed like Gion was deserted! As there wasn't much activity here and it seemed like a lot of shops were closed we chose to first go to the Fushimi Inari-taisha shrine (or the gate shrine as we conveniently called it) and find a place to eat afterwards.

As you might have already guessed we aren't really the temple/shrine loving kind of people, however we really like the Fushimi Inari-taisha shrine. The atmosphere is great, especially when it is getting dark and the lanterns are lighted. We walked around the premises a lot, took many photos and bought our own lucky torii!

The plan to find a nice place after the temple visit didn't really work out that well, the places we could find did not look or smelled good. So we went to the one place you can find nearly everywhere, yes you've guessed right, McDonalds.

All photos can be found at my flickr page

Photoshoots

If there is one thing I love it is having photoshoots. Ever since deciding on spending my vacation in Korea and Japan I have been collecting information about possible photoshoot opportunities.
Currently on my to do photo list are:

• Go Guan, photos in Hanbok

• Princess Diary Cafe, taking photos in wedding dresses

• Trick Art museum, taking photos with 3D images

• Maison de Julietta, taking photos in lolita

• Studio AYA, taking photos as Maiko