About six months after my Maiko (舞妓) debut, when I was beginning to feel comfortable at Ozashiki (お座敷, Maiko banquet) and the morning routine of social calls, I met a new customer at a Ochaya (お茶屋, tea house) and he became my frequent customer. Unconventionally, he was not my Oneisan (お姉さん, Geiko)'s frequent ones, but absolutely a first time comer. He liked me a lot and always called me to his Ozashiki along with my colleague Maiko and a Jikata Oneisan (地方, musician formally a Geiko).

The customer, a jet-set from Tokyo, was always accompanied by a beautiful lady with calm expression. I was merely a teenage girl at that time, but somehow I had a sense that those two were not a married couple.

One day, Jikata Oneisan rushed into the tea house saying that she saw an article of the customer in a magazine. It said that the customer and the lady was arrested on a charge of embezzlement from a bank at which the lady was working for. As far as I remember, the amount was two hundred millions and more... The lady offered the entire money to the customer.

The worst part came as we learned the fact. I and my colleague got freaked out because the lady gave us the gifts of heart shaped pendants and we accepted.

“Is this paid with the criminal money ?”, “What if the police come to us?”, “Are we assumed to be in conspiracy just because we received the pendant?”.....I couldn't be more panicked.

Later Jikata Oneisan and Okasan (お母さん, the female owner of the tea house) were interviewed by the police. The police asked them if there was an intimate relationship between the customer and one of our Oneisasn, and Okasan replied there was absolutely no way because the Oneisan was older than 70 years old. Now that it turned out to be an old funny story, but I still remember how scared I was at that time.

Thank you very much.

Talk to you later.

Beniko