Reykjavik is a hip little bustling town. Very Brooklyn/Portland/Austin. Walkable streets, funky galleries, cool graffiti, man-buns, coffeehouses with punny names, youngsters who party until the bars close. which is at 4:30am. At which point they stumble home roaring drunk, howling and puking beneath our hotel window, which is open. Because Iceland has no AC and contrary to its name, not all that icy. 

Our first stop is the Blue Lagoon spa. Here we lunch and then change into our suits for a soak in the warm, milky waters. We swim up to bars where we get beer and wine and cheap sunglasses as the brightness is numbing, another where we get a handful of white glop to spread over our faces – when we rinse it off 20 minutes later we get a handful of green glop. The silica in the water gets in my hair and it takes days to wash it out completely, but apparently it is all healthy and whatnot – 

It’s another hour to the hotel where we unpack and enjoy the view from our room overlooking the park which is packed with people as apparently the weather had been awful and this is the first day the Icelanders have seen the sun in several weeks. It looks like a university quad down there. 

Dinner is at Idno, housed in an old theater. The food is pretty good and well presented, with a turkey/mashed potato thing as our entree, which is the first time we’ve seen turkey on the trip, likely because we are American. Icelanders mostly eat fish – what they call trout but is larger, pink and firm like salmon and a lot of lamb. Even the hot dogs here are made from lamb.

Following dinner we are entertained by a woman’s choir singing Icelandic songs. (It is very, very white here.)

We take a short stroll around town and explore. Lots of Viking this and Viking that. At night in our room we are treated to sounds like raping and pillaging in days of yore as revelers make their way home from the bars.

The next day we get in monster jeeps and tour the “golden circle” which includes Trollish rock formations

and geyser hot springs

and the Gulfoss waterfall.

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There is a pool of water where in olden days they used to execute unfaithful women by drowning them in a bag. Like kittens!

Afterwards they deflate the tires on the monster jeeps and we four-wheel through rocky creek beds on our way to Langjokull glacier.

There we put on huge down jumpsuits and gigantic orange rain gear and gloves and boots and helmets and schlepp out to the glacier where snowmobiles are waiting for us. It starts to rain and the ice is incredibly slippery and we are walked out clutching our guides who have crampons. But once the snowmobile starts we race out – the rain stops and the ice turns fluffy and soft and it’s completely magical – hushed and powerful.

We get back to the hotel late and stumble out to Apotek for dinner – which is super hipster and serves some shellfish starter on top of a block of pink Himalayan salt followed by cubes of lamb tartar. We are too full and tired to enjoy our entrees when they arrive. It’s midnight when we tumble out, and just getting dark.

Our final day we decide to explore on our own. We find an adorable brunch spot called Snaps and get bloodys and avocado toast just like home. Then we wander the streets finding a lot of cool graffiti, and street musicians, and a stone church, and other nonsense. We shop and goof and get back just in time to go whale watching.

Around then the weather turns bad, but the whale watching boat goes out anyway. It is incredibly rough and despite wearing the rain gear they provide everyone gets soaked. We see some amazing breeches – animals fully in the air, but taking photos is impossible as we are all hanging on for dear life.

Several people huddle below deck, watching through windows, because it’s so rough, and by the time we are told to get below for the return, as waves slosh over our heads crashing onto the deck, things have taken a bad turn below and vomit bags are everywhere. We hang out at the door, despite the deluge, just to stay out of the grim.

That night it cleared up and we took a short ferry ride to Videy Island for a private dinner in a big old barn.

No one puked. Success!

We land in Alesund Norway and travel straight to Klippfiskakademiet, a culinary institute/aquarium where we are given a brief tutorial on the barabcoa – a Norwegian white fish that can be salted and dried and basically tucked away under your bed and forgotten for several years, but revived with water and consumed. I remain unconvinced. But lunch is delicious and the aquarium oddly has some adorable penguins (shipped in from South Pole but thriving,) and other creatures.

Then it’s a 2 plus hour drive and a ferry to the hotel Union Geiranger on the fjord. Our guide explains points of interest, like where the last witch was burned, and has funny colloquialisms like “he was an easy one to make a monkey bird” which I think means make a fool of.

We prowl through the hotel, which has an amazing collection of old autos in the basement – cars that the hotel used to retrieve guests form the cruise ships back in the 20s. The entire property was occupied by nazis in WWII and the cars confiscated. But they were later recovered and the few that hadn’t been destroyed or cannibalized for bits and parts restored to their former glory.

The property also has a multi tiered outdoor stairwell outside that runs alongside a stunning waterfall offering views of the fjord with its steep sheer walls formed by glacier. 

The next day we get up early to kayak. The water is smooth and easy to navigate, even with the occasionally passing ferry, and the day warm and sunny. We pass a farm on the shore, where goats roam freely, and are told there is no danger of them jumping into the fjord as goats fear water because they are not ‘water tight’ and in fact water will drown them through their anus – which sounds improbable, but we’ve also heard a bit about trolls and witches since we’ve been in this country, so not arguing.

Later that afternoon we take a pretty walk in the local mountains and see a lot of goats and some llamas and breathtaking views. Norway is all about spectacular scenery and it seems around every bend are greener mountains or more dramatic falls or more reflective fjords.

The hotel has a lovely spa and I get a foot massage while Kevin enjoys the pool. That evening we are treated to an outdoor cocktail hour with some of the best berries I’ve ever had,

followed by some sweet/humorous folk dancing performance by local octogenarians 

and then a dinner served in a traditional dirt/weed roofed cottage. We’ve seen these traditional cottages all over the landscape and apparently it was an early form of insulation – or something else.

Not sure what you can believe in Norway.

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St Petersburg was the capital of Russia for a while back in the days of the emperors, but when that all went to hell in a revolutionary hand-basket it was renamed Leningrad and poorly neglected. And then it was occupied by Nazis.

Over the last 25 years or so since perestroika, they’ve spiffed it up, restoring all the grand palaces and homes of the wealthy and elite (who long ago were slaughtered or sent to Siberia) and it is a beautiful, bustling very European city once more.

Much like the stories of the kings and queens of England, the stories of the Tsars dating all the way back to Peter the Great are steeped in blood. Fathers killing sons, sons killing fathers, wives killing husbands, husbands banishing wives, peasants rising up and slaughtering the lot of them, it’s pretty grim (and entertaining) stuff. 

Like Venice, it is a city of rivers and canals and pretty bridges and embankments lined with buildings in colorful pastels. There are large public squares and archways and cathedrals. Statues of men, most of whom were murdered in some grisly fashion or another.

Our first day we spent touring Catherine’s palace, named for both Catherine the first,

Peter the Great’s pretty German wife (whom he took after forcing his first wife into a monastery) and Catherine the Great, another German wife of a later emperor, who had her spouse killed and ruled happily alone for two decades and took several lovers. 

That evening we dine at the Russian Vodka Room on caviar and vodka and Pate and dumplings and something called Salo which is thin rolls of salted lard on rye bread with spicy mustard and a scrape of garlic. We sit out on the terrace where it stays warm and light well past 10pm. We are promised a floor show with gypsies and a dancing bear, but leave before said bear arrives.

The next day we head to the Hermitage, founded in the mid 1700s by Catherine the Great and the second largest museum in the world. Beyond the extensive collection of art by such masters as Rembrandt and DiVinci, the buildings themselves are set up as a lavish multi room palace. We are lucky to be there on a Monday, when the museum (which generally gets over 20,000 visitors a day in summertime) is closed to the public. Not only is the place empty,

but we get a private view of the winding of the peacock clock – an amazing golden machine

 

– and we get to watch local art students who come in on Mondays to copy masterpieces as part of their schooling (always scaled larger or smaller than actual – to avoid possible counterfeiting) 

We lunch at restaurant Mansarda atop the gas building overlooking the St. Isaac’s Cathedral. Then head to the Faberge museum to see the infamous eggs, which were created as gifts from one of the slaughtered tzars for his slaughtered wife.

And then The Church of the Savior on spilled blood – which gets its name from (surprise!) the actual pavement upon which one of the other emperors was slaughtered. It is pretty astounding, full of amazing mosaics and packed with tourists.

That evening we take a river boat cruise on the Neva and its canals. The architecture of the buildings that line the river is gorgeous, huge rococo buildings in pastel mint and apricot and buttercup yellow – passing under several pretty bridges. 

Our final full day in St Petersburg we take a hydrofoil across the river to Peterhof, the summer home or ‘dacha’ of Peter the Great built after he visited Versaille – from where he borrowed the ideas of formal gardens and several fountains, one of which goes off every house on the hour like it’s the Bellagio in Vegas and attracts throngs.

During WWII St Petersburg was occupied by Nazi troops, and here as well as in several other places we visit, years of painstaking restoration has been required to return the monuments to their pre war splendor. 

After Peterhof, we take an afternoon to just wander the city and shop for gifts. The streets are very ‘grid like’ and it’s easy to navigate. Walking along the canal on the way home some petty crooks are nearly successful in picking my pocket (or purse in this instance) but I struggle to find my own keys in that thing, and they were defeated by its mess. 

That evening we head to Yussupov Palace. Like all the other glorious palaces it was once owned by a noble family and was the location of a fabulous murder. (Or as said with proper Russian accent, more-deer) This was the place the last Tsar’s right hand guy, Rasputin, was killed. First poisoned with a cookie, the stabbed, then hog-tied and thrown in the river to make sure he was really, most sincerely, dead. 

Inside the palace, we are taken through several large, fancy chandeliered rooms to a jewel box of a theater where we watch a sweet ballet performance.

Then in the ballroom we dine and listen to opera.

Then back to the hotel for our final night of ‘one and done’ beluga vodka in the bar.

Obviously you can’t travel to Russia without considering the politics. I came away with a better understanding about why the populace likes their Putin, because by and large they really do. Given the bloody and brutal history of the place, evidence of which is still physically and emotionally present in the lives of the people – they are accustomed to a certain level of corruption, oppression, control. They believe they are a difficult population to govern, that they require a president who is strong and strategic and a bit ruthless. That their experiments in true democracy were a failure. That losing a bit of civil liberty is an even trade for markets filled with food and buses that run on time.

The “Paris of Siberia” is the nickname the local guides have given to Irkutsk – which sounds completely oxymoronic. Like calling it a diamond in a goats ass, right?

But it turns out that despite the fact Siberia is frozen solid 8 months out of the year, the descendants of all those intellectuals, and Jews, and Poles, and Ukrainians, and anyone else who pissed off Stalin and found themselves on a one way train to this vast wasteland, eventually developed it, and while it’s not Paris by a long shot, Irkutsk does have its own quirky charm.

We spend our first day visiting some cute churches (Russian Orthodox – so women are given scarves to cover their heads before entering)

and monuments to a bunch of people that would’ve meant more to me if I were better at history.

The Angara river runs through the city, and there is a promenade alongside it in the center of town where lovers have hung locks much like the bridges in Paris.

There is an area full of charming wooden houses with colorful shutters that were built in the beginning of the 20th century, most in various states of dilapidation

juxtaposed against some grim Soviet utilitarian style apartments. We even see a few actual Russian brides, as Friday is a big day here for weddings.

We dine out at a place called ‘The Bulldog.’ By and large the things we are served look and taste familiar. There is a strange fern like vegetable they use that tastes like asparagus- and a wide variety of berries, some I’ve never seen before.

And a lot of really exceptional vodka.

The next day we are up early for our trip to Lake Baikal, the largest (by volume) freshwater lake in the world. The lake is about as long as the distance from LA to San Francisco, a mile deep, and very, very cold.

We take a road that apparently only exists because of Dwight Eisenhower- Kruschev ordered it built for his visit that was cancelled due to some missile crisis (again, I am crap at history) but the people of Irkutsk are thrilled to have it as it’s the only direct route to the lake.

We pass miles and miles of forest occasionally dotted by small villages.

 

Siberia is one of the most sparsely populated place on the globe, given the harsh weather conditions. It’s the peak of their summer, but we are all wearing light jackets.

We stop first at the Lake Baikal museum which serves to explain the geological significance of the lake – which exists on a fault line and experiences a lot of seismic activity. There is a small aquarium with examples of sea life which amounts to a few, uninspiring (but we will later discover, tasty) smallish grey fish. There is also a chubby native seal called a Nerpa. They sell stuffed ones all over town.  There are two of them at the aquarium in a murky tank where they swim listlessly to and fro for the tourists.

Then we head down to a pier and board a boat. We see just a few boats and no other recreation at the lake, because it is so cold. Baikal freezes over in the wintertime when it becomes popular for skating, skiing, and snowmobiling, but even in the middle of summer the warmest the water gets is about 40 degrees. The lake is so large and so cold it generates its own weather, which this day was brisk and drizzly.

Still the boat ride was invigorating with views of lakeside villages and snacks and more vodka and some folk music being performed below deck.

Afterwards, we visit an open marketplace where I buy some bangles. Jade comes from the river, as does a purple stone found only in Irkutsk called Charoite.

The we have a lavish multi course lunch in a lakeside hotel. Here we try the tasty local fish which has a firm flesh and flavor a lot like salmon.

After lunch some local shaman burn what appears to be a pile of bread and foodstuffs in a hibachi grill and bang some drums offering a blessing. (I am told they burn white foods as an offering to the spirits)

Then it’s an hour back to the hotel and a couple hours to rest before they take us first to the great statue of Babr, a storybook tiger who lives in the forests and rescues sables – so we can make a wish on its claw,

then to a cute outdoor shopping area

where Kevin purchases a Putin nesting doll (inside you find Yeltsin, Gorbachev, Stalin, and a wee little Lenin) and we eat at a silly place called Love Story that has live entertainment of the folk singing/pulling guests onto the floor and dancing sort. The food is very good, salads and pate and cheeses and prosciutto with melon and raw tuna and salmon.

We are still full from lunch so pick at all the starters and pass on the entrees when they are offered. We also enjoy several shots of vodka, which I later learn is lower proof than US vodka.

And here I thought I’d developed an incredible Siberian capacity.

After 2 flights we arrive in the Gobi desert, and a 4×4 whisks us on a 45 minute rough ride through roadless desert. The landscape is almost entirely flat and void of structure or vegetation other than very short green grass (which we later learn is a sort of chive and makes the breeze oniony) I imagine the experience to be like speeding across an American prairie circa 1800. The driver plays a lot of Bruno Mars and Bieber on the radio. Kevin asks him how long till we get to the lodge, and he says, “my name is Cougar,” which turned out to be all the English he knew.

The 3 Camel Lodge turns out to be a village of gers (rhymes with beers) which is their word for yurt – round buildings of wood and felt that are the traditional home of the nomadic Mongolians, and can be erected or dismantled in less than an hour. Our unit is called reindeer, it has a bed, a few pieces of rustic furniture and a bathroom.

We have dinner in the lodge – we will eat all of our meals there, as the nearest ‘town’ is an hour away.

The food is simple, hearty soups, over cooked meats and plain veg.

The ger is cozy, and we fall asleep quickly, but are awakened before 5am by the sounds of thunder. We will soon learn that weather changes on a dime here, but this morning I’m eager to go outside and see the storm. I am greeted with a magnificent sunrise that Kevin and I marvel over and take a gazillion photos.

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The beauty of Mongolia will prove very difficult to capture in photographs – it’s so expansive and solitary.

We spend the first half of our day taking a 2 hour walk through Lamiin Ovoo, an area of long shallow rolling hills.

We pass several herds of grazing animals – the nomadic people support themselves with the products from their flocks of cows, horses, sheep, goats, and camels – but other than that the landscape is mostly remarkable for it’s vast blankness.

We return to the lodge for lunch and a lecture on paleontology as Mongolia is home to several spectacular discoveries of dinosaur bones and digs.

In the afternoon we travel to visit a nomadic family. Again we are in jeeps and we drive over an hour over roadless landscape – frequently there are no landmarks at all as far as the horizon and it’s hard to understand how the drivers navigate. Occasionally we drive through herds of animals, including the fluffy goats used for cashmere – the harsh cold of the steppe grows their coats exceptionally fine.

The family we visit raises camels and we are allowed to ‘ride’ them, on a lead. The Mongolian camels have 2 humps and you sit between them and hold onto the front one – it’s about as awkward as it sounds..

The mother in this family of 4 greets us, bringing us into her ger where she serves us tea with goat milk and some weird dried cheese curds they like for snack and we are also offered snuff which is pretty common in the culture. We ask some questions about their life, a typical nomadic family of 4 keeps about 600 animals.They send their children to school in the city. For a while there was an issue with children going to university and then staying in the city rather than returning to nomadic life, but in recent years that trend has reversed. To be honest, i don’t see how a person who has grown up living in this physical horizon of limitless open space could ever live in a city. Particularly as ugly and soviet era sad as the the city architecture is.

Also the nomads practice ‘sky burial’ which means they leave their dead out in places where they will be consumed by wolves and vultures and such. If a body is noticed to be consumed quickly, it means the person led a good and honest life and the earth wants them back. Conversely if the body lingers for days, they were sort of an asshole.

We get back in the jeeps and head for the ‘Flaming Cliffs’ a dramatic canyon of red rock where a lot of dinosaur excavation has been done and continues, and we poke around for bones.

That evening as we collect for cocktail hour, a trio of llama monks chant a blessing for us.

After dinner we are entertained by some local musicians and children. Following that we gather in the hospitality ger to meet a Mongul shaman – who turns out to be a pretty, college educated girl in her 20s who began having dreams and visions as a child and was called to this work, but now does it part time, as she just got a job with HP. She puts on some cray robes and dances with a drum and then a spirit speaks through her. She allows a few individuals to approach her and ask her questions.

There were few takers, so I volunteered. I told her I’d been sick last year, and although I was well now, I worried that because my doctors didn’t know what caused my cancer, that it might return. She asked me (through her translator) to remove my glasses. She wore a thick fringe over her face, so i couldn’t see her eyes, but she took my hand is her strong grip for a long time. She asked me if I’d traveled to a place with large rocks (??) then after a long pause said that I was a person whose spirit was very sensitive to different places.

Which was not entirely dissimilar to what my oncologist told me – that western medicine had no idea what caused my sort of cancer, but the theory was that it was environmental. So that’s a little bit woo-woo, right?

The next morning we hiked 250 steps up to a Buddhist temple high up in some pretty cliffs. Then some contortionists entertained us at lunch. Apparently there are a lot of Mongolia contortionists including a meaningful percentage of the folks in circ de soleil 

We spent the afternoon at a local festival where there was a children’s horse race, (Mongolia horses are quite small and not surprisingly the smallest children did the best including a number of girls)  a wrestling tournament, and an archery competition.

It was fun cheering and mixing with the locals.

The wrestlers wear blue briefs and a long sleeve red bolero that is open in the front. We are told it didn’t used to be open, but when women began to want to compete they changed the design to keep them out. Which is sort of crummy. On the other hand, a man mountain won as they don’t have divisions or weight classes – it would take a pretty gigantic woman to compete.

That evening is a popular band called ‘Legend’ in the dining hall, who performed some throat singing which is a Mongolian thing where they make their voice sound a bit like a moog synthesizer.

That night is a wild rainstorm and the morning drive back to the airport is a wild one, muddy and slippery and lots of fish-tailing.

 

Maybe you know a lot about Japan – in which case some of the things that surprised me about this country will sound laughably ignorant. Like despite being only about the size of California, it’s population is equal to half that of the US. And much of its land is not inhabitable (too mountainous, needed for agriculture) so folks are packed in pretty tight and there are a lot of strict rules about cars and such. Cremation is strongly recommended to the populace, if you opt for burial, they have to break some bones so you can fit into a small barrel they use instead of a casket, and everyone in the family goes into the same grave. It is incredibly clean, the people are very health conscious, and the toilets are hilarious and “medical” according to our guide.

There are plenty of signs everywhere to tell you how to behave.

Kyoto is its prettiest large city, and former capital. It’s full of shrines and temples and parks. During the time we’ve been here, it’s been intolerably hot.  Daytime temps are well over 100 degrees with humidity thick as pudding. Several heat related deaths are reported in the newspaper. Our guides circulate with fans, water, salt candy, damp cloths, and cold compressed air in a can.

That being said, the Four Seasons in Kyoto where they stashed us is spectacular. We look out on a tea garden   And the cookies they bring us look like jewelry

 Although the eggs Benedict at breakfast was a bit VIVID, even for Kev who generally has been able to eat any preparation

And neither of use went for the sparrows on a skewer we saw in the marketplace, which is really just an efficient way to dispose of the sparrows who are a pest to the rice farmers 

There are several spectacular sites, including the 10,000 Torii gates up to the Fushimi  Inari shrine.

We made an offering to the Shinto God of that shrine -which looked like a fox and had something to do with commerce. There are like a million Shinto Gods and they each have their own specialty, although there is no Shinto ‘bible’ or holy book and the religion seems to be mostly about making wishes for good luck and offerings (usually saki) to ward off bad luck. The Japanese are big believers in luck. Wishes are written down on all sort of combustibles and later burned by the priests. And there is a protocol of purification that looks like this:

 

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There arealso a lot of Buddhist temples which is sort of ironic because Shinto shrines are where you go to request your hearts desire, and Buddhism is where you go to achieve freedom from desire. Each shrine and temple we visit we has been rebuilt. It seems every building in Japan has been a victim of natural disaster, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, fires (everything is built of wood which = FUEL) This golden temple Kinkakuji above was burned to the ground by a crazy monk who was imprisoned and his mother committed suicide out of shame. Because that’s what mothers do.

We take a hot, sweaty rickshaw ride through the bamboo forest

We go to Nara, where the shrine is ‘guarded’ by some very aggressive deer

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Inside the temple are wondrous statues and a tunnel you can crawl through to gain enlightenment – which had a long line so you could do this: 

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We eat some interesting things. This is conch. (It is not sparrow)

Finally a word on GEISHAS. We saw several young women dressed in full geisha regalia (despite the terible heat) at all the famous shrines and temples. It has become trendy for young Japanese women to dress up and take selfies this way. Think of all the US girls wearing non-clothes and pouting like Kardashians. Same diff. There are kimono rental shops near all the national monuments catering to them – they even do make-up and hair. For example this:

Not a geisha. According to our guide, not even Japanese.

This: 

Also not geisha. In fact it’s a man.

This:  is a geisha (the one in the middle – I know…hard to tell us apart) A contemporary geisha is something like being a professional cheerleader in USA. They are rarely seen in public – and work mostly private events, many for businessmen. The hair and make-up take hours and you have to learn a ton of choreography. The career lasts as long as you are young and pretty, and the pay is not great. The unspoken hope is that you marry rich. But geishas start their career as a “maiko” when they are around 14 (high school is not compulsory) which is just nuts. If I made a career decision at fourteen, I would also choose one that allowed me to put big sparkly things in my hair. Who wouldn’t?

The white makeup is because Japanese (particularly older Japanese) are obsessed with keeping their skin pale. On the hottest days women, middle-aged and older, wear long sleeves and gloves. Some even wore full on Handmaids Tale bonnets.

We, on the other hand, ended our day here.   It was swell. 

 

The summer after we last went round the world with National Geographic,  and I started this blog, my twin children got married. Not to each other – we are not carny folk – but to lovely people.

As if that weren’t swell enough, we also went boating in Greece with Kevin’s girls. It was a truly great summer.

The following summer, which was last summer, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. And that was shitty. Really, really shitty. And in the midst of all the horror, I received a brochure in the mail for a new roundtheworld NatGeo trip, and I thought, this new trip will happen in a year- I will either be dead, or be able to see some new places. Places I’ve never been.

An honest to goodness kickthebucketlist. Of places in the NORTH. (I know…feels very, “AND WINTER is coming.” But I am sucker for a GOT aphorism)

So here we are. Headed to Japan first, then North of the 45th parallel for the rest of the trip. Which means the sun will never set. And temps will drop. And maybe I can stop sweating this July of 2018 which recently has been quite sweaty.

Right now we are in Seattle. Which Kev and I have both visited, but not together, and not for several years. We walked to Pikes farmers market – and got ice cream and watched the Ferris wheel.

 

We also (accidentally) walked through the alley of gum-on-walls…which likely has a name but…really??? Most shocking were the droves of tourists posing in front of masticated bleh like it was the Mona Lisa.

Don’t go! I need to believe in humanity.

Also in the interest of NOT MISSING a thing – we put 50 cents in a machine that showed us large shoes. Which proves a sucker is born every minute, and he has no problem asking his wife for 2 quarters.

Then to Elliot’s for oysters and wine before returning to the hotel for some preflight instruction and more wine.

Tomorrow we head out on this fancy black airplane and I feel just like Morgan Freeman in Shawshank when he decided to violate his parole and go find Andy on that bus, and he said,

”I find I’m so excited I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it’s the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain.”

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Our first stop is Kyoto which is predicted to be hot enough to melt a geisha’s face.