Lanterns on a Working Street

East of the river, the streets grow narrow and stop looking modern. Higashi Chaya is a small grid of two-storey wooden houses. They have fine wooden screens across the front, deep roofs, and stone paving that turns dark in the rain. As the light faded, paper lanterns came on beside the doors.

It is easy to think a street like this is a museum, but that is wrong. The district was built in eighteen twenty for performers who entertained rich merchants. It still works today. About forty geiko, the local word for geisha, train and perform in the city's three teahouse quarters, in the same upstairs rooms behind the same screens.

Polly sat on a roof tile. A shamisen began to play above the street, then a drum, then a voice. Nobody was playing for people outside. Below, the street stayed an ordinary street. A bicycle leaned on a wall. A box sat on a step. A cat crossed slowly.

On the corner, a shop sold soft ice cream with a whole sheet of gold leaf on top. Long bamboo chopsticks lift the sheet, and a small breath settles it. The city's hardest craft, sold in a cone.