Maiko Night Performance with Kaiseki-style Kyoto cuisine Dinner

It was a very nice experience, the food was great and the maiko was very elegant. The english translation on the audio guide was shorter than the original japanese though, they translated maybe 1 sentence out of 6.

I’m waiting the theatre address I hope the instruction Best regards Zxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Very bad organization m, the meeting place was not clear I received the pdf only a few minutes before and it was not clear at all. Another caught tourist organized by Americans probably

Good parts: nice ambience, lovely Maiko, pleasant night hilltop view. Poor parts: Audio guide given but the live guide didnt really care whether or not we understood anything. Also although it was wonderful to view the Maiko's performance, no summary was given in English. I wouldn't go again with this company.

Just to be aware that this tour is in Japanese mostly. About 20% is in English unlike advertised. The Maiko performance is beautiful. Dinner is average. Overall very overpriced is least impressive of my experiences in Kyoto. Best to see Maiko performance somewhere else.

Nice bus ride to the dinner and Maiko show. Bus was full. Classic Japanese food and great service. Maiko took pictures with all the guests. After dinner, walking through a classic Japanese garden. Very nice. Great photos. Extra trip to a beautiful Mountain View location to see the city at night atop the mountain.

Overall this was a good experience, though aspects of it were very disjointed and unclear. The first confusing part was that you are not issued actual Tickets upon purchase, but rather, are issued a 'voucher', which you must then turn in at a specific desk located somewhere outside of the VERY LARGE KYOTO STATION complex. We were given multiple different directions and maps for 'how' to find the particular desk. And even then, I had trouble finding the ticket desk. Then we finally get on the bus that will take us to the venue for the dinner and maiko performance. Everyone was given a plastic folder with a number of papers inside, a pair of cheap generic headphones, and some type of electronic recorder so you could hear the translation in multiple languages. I had no interest in all the papers, or wasting a pair of headphones (only to have them be tossed into a landfill) or the silly recording device (which would likely only provide a monotone, uninspiring 'translation'). So I didn't bother with that. We then find that the dinner and maiko performance are apparently inside a hotel...in one of their private function rooms. There were probably about 40 or so of us attendees, and we are directed into a dining area that had long tables set up, with kaiseki dinners awaiting us, at each place setting. We could see there was a small stage, where the maiko performance would likely be occurring. We all took a seat at one of the tables, and waited for a few minutes, trying to understand what we should do. We noted a few waitstaff standing around, and they began to offer us water and ask if we wanted to order any other beverages. As for the tour operator....the guide who was speaking to us on the bus, en route to the hotel...or the bus driver...or any of the other bus tour company staff... they were nowhere to be seen, anywhere in the room. It was as if we were just 'dumped off' at the hotel, and we were now in the hands of the hotel staff. It was rather odd....and so we just looked at each other and said 'so, I guess we just start eating now?' There was no direction...no advance explanation...of how this would all play out. So we begin our meal (which, by the way, was pretty good...nothing spectacular...), and eventually a woman comes to the front of the room and introduces the maiko. As for the maiko herself, she was in a beautiful kimono, with her face and hair done up in a traditional style (as seen in the photos here). Her performance was truly beautiful, and accompanied by traditional singing and music (which I suspect was done by someone who was hidden behind a shoji screen, onstage). After her performance, the maiko talked to us about her training, and then even answered some questions. She was incredibly sweet, and it was nice to see a bit of her personality coming through during her talk and the subsequent Q&A (and after her having to perform in front of us, in more of a 'deadpan' manner, and where we didn't get to see her true personality). At a certain point, a number of the diner left the room, and we began to understand that we were to walk the grounds of the hotel for a certain amount of time. And while the hotel grounds surely were stunningly beautiful, my friend and I were not the only ones who were confused about Where exactly we can or should be walking, or any other details. It was all rather disjointed. Then it was time to get back on the bus, and this time we were driven to a vista point, and where we got a great view of the city of Kyoto, down below. Overall, a great event, but the voucher/ticket aspect was very confusing, and the event organizers could have done a better job with the directions on how/where to find the ticket desk where we needed to exchange our voucher. They should have included actual photos of the ticket desk...what it looked like...what else it was in relation to.....that it was out on the STREET/GROUND level (versus the underground level), etc. And they also could have done a better job at explaining, at each point in the night, what was going to happen next, and the timings, etc.

The food and show was great, however I was the only non Japanese person. Japanese had a real guide which I could hear all the time while I got earphones with very bad sound quality sometimes playing 2 sound channels at the same time. The bus Tour was miserable but the mako and food still worth it I guess.

I was looking for a maiko performance and saw this listing, which also included dinner. What I didn’t expect was that we would experience more than that. The tour group wasn’t too big. There were about 20 people or less, so the bus wasn’t too crowded. First, there was a bus tour that provided interesting information about Kyoto. Each passenger had an individual audio for their own language. The audio was synchronized according to the locations we passed by. Then we had a kaiseki dinner - a multi course dinner including an explanation of what kaiseki dinners are about. Then we watched a maiko performance by Fukumiyo-San, who had trained for a year at the time. I have seen other maiko perform and in my humble opinion, Fukumiyo-san performed the best among the maiko we have seen. Her movements seemed more precise to my layman eyes. After her performance, we got to ask her questions. Everyone had more than enough time to ask questions such as why she chose to become a maiko, or what part of her art does she like best, challenges, etc. Then we all got a chance to take a photo with Fukumiyo-San. When we took our photo, a camera blocked a part of the view and I just shrugged it off, but the host noticed it and invited us to take another set of photos. Excellent service! Next, we had a chance to go to the garden next to the dinner. I didn’t expect much but I was surprised at its beauty. It was the most beautiful garden we saw on this trip, even including gardens at famous temples. There was another short bus trip and we went to a vista overlooking the Kyoto nightscape.

Although this was a bus tour and there was no English guide, I got the experience I wanted from this trip. I think it was great, as it’s hard to find a place in Kyoto at this price where you can see a geisha performance.