The street entrance to the Tamahan Hotel where we stayed in Kyoto. The hotel was tucked up near the hills on a quiet street.

Once you pass through the cloth street entrance of the Tamahan Hotel, you enter the garden path leading to the actual hotel.

This is the passage way from one section of the Tamahan Hotel to another section that houses our room. The walkway is wooden planks about a foot off the ground. Our hotel room is the door at the end of the walkway.

This is our room at the Tamahan Hotel in Kyoto. It was a traditional Japanese bed and breakfast hotel (called a Ryokan). We ate and slept on the floor in this single room.

They served us breakfast (and dinner if we wanted) in our room. You could order a traditional Japanese or Western style breakfast. We tried both and definitely preferred the Western style. : )

The small sitting area (and TV) between our eating/sleeping room and the garden courtyard.

Traditional Japanese decorations in our hotel room.

The small wooden tub in our Tamahan Hotel room. The water stayed hot for hours and hours. One was supposed to shower before entering the bath. The shower is in the foreground.

We slept on the floor and kept the sliding doors of our room open to the garden. This is the view in the early morning light. It was really quiet and peaceful.

The courtyard garden outside our hotel room. Three other hotel rooms opened to this garden, but it was so dense that you still had privacy.

This is the Gion Geisha District in Kyoto. The curved bamboo structure you see in the foreground is used as a preventive measure to keep dogs from peeing on the house walls. Another person said they were also seen as a status symbol.

A typical lantern outside a Geisha home that housed several Geishas. Each Geisha district had its own graphic symbol, which you see painted on this lantern. It was a way of identifying the Geisha district.

The entrance to a house where several Geishas live. Their names are written on the small vertical signs.

The entrance to another Geisha house. You can see the traditional Geisha wooden sandals to the left, and the more modern pair of shoes in the foreground. I thought it was an interesting juxtaposition of traditional and modern styles.

This large building is the registry, school and theater for the Geishas in one district. If one wanted to hire the services of a Geisha, they would make the arrangements through the registry.