'Quite how we got from drinking tea to first walking through Gion then posing for pictures in the gardens of Chion-in I’m still not sure. Of course the others finally saw through my ‘disguise’, we’d actually walked most of the way to Chion before my sister finally twigged. Let’s face it, if Aoi has been charged with looking after the three of us why would she leave one behind?

It was knocking on two o’clock by the time we were done, delayed it seems at every turn by tourist cameras intent on photographing the ‘geisha’. I hardly qualify as a maiko let alone the real thing and it was getting more than a bit uncomfortable to be trussed in the heavy layers of silk and cotton.'