自転車で先斗町Pontocho is one of Kyoto's licensed geisha areas. Thus, along the narrow atmospheric street are tea houses where geisha and maiko perform and entertain.
Many other restaurants and bars also line the street, so it is thronged with people every night.
Cycling is not an option except in the very early hours of morning. Even then it is a bit dodgy: if someone were to come out of a shop just as a cyclist was passing, the ending would not be good. There is no room to avoid a collision.
Hence, this street is a park-and-walk place. There is a lot on nearby Kiyamachi Dori.
Ponotcho runs north-south and is a tight alley that lies between the Kamo River and Kiyamachi in central Kyoto.
The name is thought to derive from the Portuguese "ponto" (point) and Japanese "cho" (neighborhood). The flowers of the night - geisha and maiko - have been working in the tea houses here since the 16th century. In the distant past, prostitution also was common on the street. Today that is not the case.
At the northern end of the street is the Pontocho Kaburenjo (pictured below), a theater in which geisha have performed twice annually since the 1870s.
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Pontocho
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