The Obake event

The 23rd and 24th were the days of the Obake event in Hachioji.
If you read my previous posts about the preparation of the Obake event, you can see I was really looking forward to this event.
However it started with one hiccup.

On the day before the first day of the event, I promised my geisha sister, who I was pairing up with, that we would do the last practice together and we would not accept any requests for an after party from our customers on that day.
On that day my geisha sister and I were requested to attend different ozashiki parties.
My geisha sister was going to finish her ozashiki party before me.

However when I went back to the okiya, she was not there.
I called her but she didn’t answer.
I was waiting for her for about 1 hour, but she didn’t come back so I decided to go back home.

After I arrived at my apartment I received an email from my geisha mother.
In her email, my geisha mother said that my geisha sister was preparing for the Obake event just by herself.
When I read her email, I felt angry, because she didn’t know about our promise.
I called my geisha sister angrily, and I found out that my geisha mother had taken my geisha sister to the after party.
Unfortunately, my geisha mother was sitting next to my geisha sister, and helping her prepare for the Obake event, so I couldn’t express my anger on the phone.

After I rang off, my mind was hazy from the surprise, so I sent an email to my geisha sister that there was one thing which I wanted to talk to her about the next day.

When I met my geisha sister the next day at the Okiya I felt angry again. I started to explain how I had been disappointed the previous day as calm as possible.
However I suddenly felt very sad, and I started crying.
My geisha sister and the other geisha sisters, who also happened to be there, looked surprised, and my geisha sister apologized.
I was also surprised that my passion for the Obake event was greater than I thought.

All of the geisha who were going to be “Obake” inspected the venues beforehand from 1:30pm.
We were going to visit over 5 local Japanese restaurants and bars on each Obake event day.
At some restaurants, there were 2 rooms, so would perform 7-9 times in a day.
It was very important to check the venues in advance, because some bars were very small and we had to check the audio equipment setup in each room.
At that time, my geisha sister and I found out that the volume of our music tape was too low, so we recreated our tape after we finished looking the venues.

After we took a short break, my geisha sister and I started putting on our make-up.
Before that day, we researched each character’s make-up on the Internet, so I thought we could do it well.
After we were made up, my geisha sister helped me put on the Koken costume.
Then I helped my geisha sister put on her Sanbaso costume.
We looked like real Sanbaso and Koken.

After we had changed into our costumes, we tried dancing at the okiya.
I felt a little anxious whether we would be able to dance smoothly wearing our costumes.
However it was an unnecessary concern.

At about 5pm, we gathered on the second floor of the kenban, the geisha office, to see each group’s performance beforehand, because we would not be able to see each performance during the obake event.
When my group was performing, the audio player didn’t work well, so we could know that our audio player was not good. Each group had their own audio player to take with them for their performance. Since we discovered that ours wasn’t working we had to change it for a new one.
Our music tape was working fine.

On that day it rained in the morning, however it had already stopped by the afternoon.
We were delighted very much.

Finally the Obake event started.

Beforehand, we had decided the order of our performances; which group would start at which restaurant before moving to the next restaurant.
We had to complete our performance and leave each venue within 15 minutes before moving to the next venue.

However depending on the situation, we might have to change the order, so we emailed each other regarding when we would arrive and leave each venue so that we could know each group’s situation.

At the first venue, I got tense. However when the last performance finished I was really satisfied.

My geisha sister’s regular customers called us to the local bars after the Obake events on each day.
They said to us that our performance level and composition was the highest.
When I heard that I was really glad.

Although it started with one hiccup, I really enjoyed my second Obake event.