Gion Corner — Attraction in Kyoto

Pay at your own risk. We had high expectations of the performances lined up for us that night. Unfortunately upon watching the 45 minute show there were some things that annoyed me and my family:

1. The tea ceremony is at a corner. Freshly made green tea was given to the ones who paid the super VVIP tickets. They were given a tablet too to watch the show with English subtitles. General audience members can't watch the tea ceremony properly.
2. Ikebana flower arrangement was using flowers that were not fresh.
3. That comedy slot. While the brochure did explain what the slot was about, no one was laughing but the Japanese as there were no subtitles except for the first and second class ticket holders who had the tablets. I mean I know when visiting Japan you cannot have English subtitles like watching anime but still...
4. that two masked performances. I get that the performance is part and parcel of Japanese art and culture spanning thousands of years. But honestly the general audience would not understand why did the performers point up and down and flip up and down their sleeves. If there are any Japanese dances or songs that are more relatable to the general audience that would have been much better to be performed.

The prices we paid were not cheap. For the general audience I would consider the performances as too fine art and to a certain extend, classist. I nonetheless enjoyed the costumes they donned during the performances. Despite the language barrier, the actors for the comedy slot gave their all. Obviously the geisha show was...

This place shows you the different traditional arts of Japan. It included harp play (koto), flower arrangement, geisha/maiko dance, traditional music and dance, tea ceremony, comical theater and puppet theater (bunraku). All this was packed in a 50 minute show.

It's hard to give this a bad rating, because the show did give a good introduction to all the aforementioned art forms. And it certainly had it's good aspects like the beautiful costumes.

But that being said, the show had a very slow pace and did (in my opinion) not show expert craftsmanship of the various arts. The tempo was often so slow that some things like the dances seemed easy. I understand that these are traditionally slower and not as spectacle-prone as some other shows, but that still makes it only suitable for a very small audience.

Although everything was explained in English, not everything was translated, which made some things like the comical theater impossible to follow for foreigners.

I don't want to scare people away with this review, just be warned that this is not for everyone and for some of the art forms, there are other dedicated shows available which were in my opinion better although focused on one subject. The price was also...

Having watched performing arts shows all over the world, this was a bit of a disappointment, to be honest. The theatre size was a bit on the smaller side and it felt they tried to fit in a lot of different things in one show while compromising the quality.

As you can see in the flyer, there are different shows and the show I watched had all of them except for the Noh play.

The Kyogen comedy was quite hilarious and my favourite. It was in Japanese, which I do not understand. However, since we bought premium seats, we got a phone that had some subtitles and that made it easier to understand the plot.

My next fav was the traditional Kyomai dance. Very well performed and their attire were absolutely stunning!

I was highly disappointed by Ikebana flower arrangement, Chanoyu and Koto Music. Having seen many other videos of these, I felt these were low effort and not upto the mark!

I don't have any videos/photos of the performance as it was not allowed once the show starts.

I would recommend this show if you are looking for an introduction to Japanese culture and traditional performing arts. But the tickets in advance, online, as they get sold out by the...