Unfortunately the battery in the camera decided to pack it in as soon as we walked through the door, so we didn’t walk away with a complete photo tour of the establishment, which was set up the way things would have been.
Anyone with a mind to sample geisha entertainment might be interested to learn that there are still eight houses in the quarter offering the traditional treats, but be warned - it doesn’t come cheaply. We were informed that a ninety minute session would set you back $US 1500!
From there we headed back to the bus stop, boarded the next bus and headed off towards Kanazawa Castle and more cherry blossom but no sooner had we alighted than the rain, which had been threatening for a while, decided to do a bit more than threaten, so we walked through the drizzle, completing a loop of the Kenrokuen Garden before deciding that enough was enough and heading back to the hotel to check in, rest and recharge the camera.
We had figured that with a break of an hour or so we could head off on the second-last bus for the day, get a couple of photos and catch the final bus back to base, so we emerged from the warmth and dryness of the hotel to find that conditions were cold, drizzly and generally miserable. When we’d boarded the bus in the afternoon it had been fairly crowded. Now, a mere three or four hours later, it was, unsurprisingly, practically deserted.
Since we knew where we were going, we were looking forward to snapping a couple of photos of the sakura in front of the castle before doing a quick lap of the garden, but as soon as we embarked on the latter exercise, the camera decided to inform us that there was no more space on the memory card, which was, in a way, just as well, since we only just managed to catch the final bus back.
At the station we booked our seats for the next stage of the trip, headed back into Forus for dinner, opting for a Korean eatery which was not quite what the doctor ordered, eventually returning to the warmth of the hotel hoping that things would turn out better on the morrow.