“…and if she felt hungry, she certainly wasn’t going to stroll into the kitchen to prepare something by herself – such as an umeboshi ochazuke, which was a favorite snack of hers, made with leftover rice and pickled sour plums, soaked in hot tea…”
Memoirs of a Geisha
“…Both a housewife and a geisha will begin by taking off their makeup robes and tucking a silk slip around the bare hips; we call this a koshimaki – “hip wrap”…”
Memoris of a Geisha
“….Auntie painted onto the back of Hatsumomo’s neck a design called sanbon-ashi “three legs.” It makes a very dramatic picture, for you feel as if you’re looking at the bare skin of the neck through little tapering points of a white fence. It was years before I understood the erotic effect it has on man…”
Memoirs of a Geisha
“…We had reached Shijo Avenue by now and crossed it in silence. This was the same avenue that had been so crowded the day Mr. Bekku had brought Satsu and me from the station. Now so early in the morning, I could see only a single streetcar in the distance and a few bicylists here and there. When we reached the other side, we continued up a narrow street, and then Pumpkin stopped for the first time since we’d left the okiya…”
Memoirs of a Geisha
“…I almost fekt sick the first time she unfastened her robe and pulled it down from her shoulders, because the skin there and on her neck was bumpy and yellow like an uncooked chickens’s. The problem, as I later learned, was that in her geisha days she’d used a kind of white makeup we call “China Clay”, made with a base of lead. China Clay turned out to be poisonous, to begin with, which probably accounted in part for Granny’s foul disposition…”
Memoirs of a Geisha
“…I felt certain she was going to say something more to me after I’d approached her, but instead she took from her obi, where she kept it tucked, a pipe with a metal bowl and a long stem made of bamboo. She set it down beside her on the walkway and then brought from the pocket of her sleeve a drawstring bag of silk, from which she removed a big pinch of tobacco. She packed the tobacco with her little finger, stained the burnt orange color of a roasted yam, and then put the pipe into her mouth and lit it with a match from a tiny metal box…”
“…Whenever she put her pipe down onto the table with a click, flecks of ash and tobacco flew out of it, and she left them wherever they lay…”
Memoirs of a Geisha
“…The buildings in the courtyard, though they gave the impression of another group of tiny houses, were just a small shed for the toilets and a storehouse of two levels with a ladder on the outside…”
“…But here the wood floors and beams gleamed with the yellow light of electric lamps. Opening off the front hallway were sliding doors with paper screens, as well as a staircase that seemed to climb straight up…”
Memoirs of a Geisha
“…Her hair fashioned into lobes, gleamed as darkly as lacquer, and was decorated with ornaments carved out of amber, and with a bar from which tiny silver strips dangled, shimmering as she moved. This was my first glimpse of Hatsumomo…”
Memory of a Geisha
“… We turned onto another street, and I saw for the first time the Minamiza Theater standing on the opposite side of the bridge ahead of us. Its tiled roof was so grand, I thought it was a palace…”
Memoirs of a Geisha
“… Back then, around 1930, a fair number of rickshaws still operated in Kyoto. In fact, so many were lined up before the station that I imagined no one went anywhere in this big city unless it was in a rickshaw – which couldn’t have been further from the truth…”
“… We climbed into a rickshaw, with Mr. Bekku squeezed tightly on the bench between us. he was a good deal bonier under that kimono even than I suspected. We pitched back as driver raised the poles, and then Mr. Bekku said : Tominaga-cho, in Gion…”
Memoirs of a Geisha
My life in a Book 