So I was looking through some old photos last night and found a photo with a note on back from my friend who I will call Robin. The note said, “Where is my geisha shirt?”
A few years ago I had a job for the University coordinating educational events on foreign cultures. It was a lot of fun, but a lot of stress and university politics as well. I had no funding so every event was preceeded by months of desperate fundraising. I was also dependant on arbitrary budgets designed by my predecessor. The event I was proudest of was the Japanese festival. I had a group come in and demonstrate Japanese tea ceremony, some educational speakers, Japanese professors to teach some Kanji, Karaoke and of course free food (the life-blood of any event). So we made a ton of yakisoba and sushi.
I stuck to my vegetarian sushi recipie as this sushi would have to keep and I did not want to wrangle with raw fish for such a large event. So I coerced a bunch of volunteers from the Foreign Language Housing to come help make sushi. Most of them were women, and agreed to help on one condition: that their official title be “Sushi Geishas”. I agreed and that night we made over 100 rolls of vegetarian sushi.
The sushi and yakisoba were a big hit at the festival and my Sushi Geishas insisted I make them shirts proclaiming their title on the back. It is with regret and guilt that I admit I never got around to fulfilling that request.