I was determined to sleep in a Ryokan, the traditional lodging for tourists in Japan, usually reserved for Japanese folks back then.
The taxi driver, after many minutes of arguing and trying to tell us in broken English, insisted we had to have a reservation to stay in a Ryokan.
My persistence paid off after a couple of hours; Susan and I, with our luggage couched up in the lobby. We were invited to fill out a guest application.
The best was yet to come.
Dressed and made up to the top, she ran a bath. She pushed me to the bathroom and helped me to undress and sink into the hot tub. When I got out of the bathroom, I drained the tub, which brought a sudden reaction from our geisha. She rushed to the bathroom and stopped the drainage of the tub, with her arms up in the sky. After much ado, we realized that the water of the man’s bath is saved for the woman. Water saving was our guess.
The food brought to our room was a multitude of dishes, all very small, like bites of food. Luckily for us, our geisha was there to explain every dish’s composition and origin. It would have been even more beneficial if we had been able to speak Japanese.
