Commodore Perry very merry

Kyoto is beautiful. Pretty, picturesque, and calm. Yesterday we rode our bikes (yes, we have bikes here too! The hotel where we are staying, which, incidentally, has a pay TV in the room, gave them to us for free!) down this willow tree lined narrow street that is cut in half by a river and there is no railing from the street to the river. At night you can barely see where street ends and water begins. In America, this would be grounds for a thousand lawsuits.
The view from our window:


We were searching for this vegetarian restaurant, but unfortunately, I was looking at the wrong "fork" icon on our Lonely Planet map, and led us in the wrong direction. Fortunately, this led us to stumble on a tofu restaurant where we ate cold tofu, hot tofu, tofu skimmings, and tofu skewers. Zack was in heaven. I thought it was pretty good, too. As we left, Zack told the owner of the restaurant--who spoke pretty good English -- about how his dad used to make tofu in the '70's in Canada, and the owner freaked out and told us we must, must, must go visit the little shop where he buys his tofu. He gave us his card, and told us to be sure to tell the shopkeeper about Zack's dad. We plan to do this today.
Here's the wonderful tofu meal:


But first - the Imperial Palace. My father was right and we should have planned this trip earlier and got tickets online for the Imperial Palace and made a million phone calls to confirm it and not relaxed until after we had seen it. But alas, we did not. So we are going to head over there now and beg to be let in. Apparently, they only let you in with appointment. This is better than the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, which doesn't let you in at all. The guidebook doesn't seem to think it will be a problem to get tickets for the same day. We'll see.

Last night we walked through the Floating World, where we looked into the windows of wooden houses and saw women entertaining men. Are those geishas? We wondered. They looked like regular people, no face paint, nothing. But then we found out the answer when we saw a cab carrying two women with faces painted white, one of them adjusting her hair, the other on her cell phone. Geishas! Then we saw another geisha walking down the street and into the subway. They exist.

We stopped into an Irish pub, where the bartender was this guy from Liverpool who had moved here 25 years ago and spoke a pretty good Japanese. We were impressed to see this white guy chat it up with the locals. I asked him, "What's the deal with the geishas?" The deal, it turns out, is that there are two kinds - maikas and geishas - both have white faces. A maika aspires to have a man--usually married--sponsor her so that she can open her own geisha bar, and in return she must give the man "special favors." This is how the maika becomes a geisha. Maikas who are not yet geishas are simply entertainers--versed in art, poetry, music, and it is perfectly acceptable to marry a maika because they are not sexually obligated to their customers. But if some young salaryman does take a liking to a maika, she will of course have to leave the geisha world to marry the guy.

I also read about some lawsuit against the geisha world, and I'd be interested in reading more about that.

Now, off to the Imperial Palace.