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In the late afternoon you see them bustling off to their evening appointments. The bold colours of their kimonos burst like flares in the narrow streets. Their high wooden shoes, meant to keep their silks out of medieval muck, clatter on modern pavement. They seem so aloof, unattainable, of a past age – until you see a bunch of them piling into the back of a cab. They are maiko, apprentice geisha.

The city of Kyoto is where geisha culture achieved, and maintains, its peak. In Tokyo, a woman can become a geisha after a mere six months of training. A Kyoto geisha may spend up to six years, till the age of 21, as a maiko living in a “teahouse,” studying traditional dance, song, music and other refined arts. She is an artist – as the word “geisha,” or “person of art,” denotes. But don't get the idea that a Kyoto geisha party is all refinement. Along with her artistic accomplishments, the geisha is also master of the arts of making her customers laugh, stroking their egos and keeping their glasses topped up. The culmination of her craft is to be the ideal female companion – in every way but one: Geishas are not prostitutes.

Of course gaining entry to a world so hedged round with tradition is not a simple matter.

No amount of money will buy your way in. The only key to unlock the door of a Kyoto teahouse is an introduction from a customer, and in Japan introductions are not made lightly. Which means a foreigner could spend years making the necessary connections. And a traveller passing through town doesn't stand a chance.

That's where Peter MacIntosh comes in. In the dozen or so years since this expat Haligonian landed in Japan, he's done the heavy lifting for us, carving out a niche for himself in the geisha world. Today he's the co-proprietor of Hanagumo, the only bar in Kyoto where a traveller can drop out of the blue right into a real private geisha party. And for those who aren't that curious, but would still enjoy an insider's view of this fascinating world, Peter offers entertaining daily walking tours of Kyoto's geisha districts.

I met Peter back in 1994, when we lived together in a gaijin (foreigners') house in Kyoto. He was in his early twenties then, a burly, straight-talking guy's guy with a strange fascination with Kyoto's butterflies of the evening. I have to admit we smirked a little when this former soccer player came home one night, breathless with the news that he had chatted up his first maiko. After that, he set an eccentric course, mastering the Kyoto dialect, finding a patron to introduce him to a teahouse and promenading around town in traditional Japanese garb. Eventually, in 1999 he married a geisha (or former geisha, for the women must leave the trade to wed). Her professional name, Hanagumo, “Flower Cloud,” now graces the door of their establishment.

The bar is in Miyagawa, one of Kyoto's five traditional geisha quarters. As a bar, not a teahouse, it has no in-house maiko. But with advance notice, Peter can line up an evening's entertainment. The party room is upstairs, a pleasingly spare space with tatami-mat floors.

Patrons can choose between the economy course, which offers one maiko performing to recorded music, and the full course with live music. Peter sits in as facilitator and translator, as few maiko speak English.

What should you expect from a geisha party? Fun, according to Peter. “A lot of my customers are like, ‘Is it okay to talk to them?' They have this exalted idea of geisha being unapproachable. But they're just women doing their job. They love to chat and play drinking games and answer questions about what they do.” And though the geisha's raison d'être is to entertain men, a lot of Hanagumo's customers are women, their curiosity aroused by Memoirs of a Geisha. (Peter's maiko friends didn't like the film, saying the actresses were “not classy.”)

Geisha live here

On Peter's tour, it's cherry blossom season as we meet in front of Kyoto's main Kabuki theatre. Peter, burlier than ever and regally dressed in a grey-and-white kimono (“I let my wife pick my clothes for me,” he confides) leads the 16 of us away from the busy intersection and down the narrow streets of his district. The sober, shuttered teahouses give away nothing to the uninitiated until Peter points out the wooden signs beside the doors that identify the maiko residents.

Kyoto has about 300 geisha these days, including 70 in Miyagawa, which Peter calls “off-Broadway” to the more famous Gion district. Those numbers are up from 15 years ago, an indication that, after decades of decline, being a geisha is once again a glamorous profession in Japanese girls' eyes.

As we stroll along, Peter shares tales of life in the trade while pointing out the geisha school, the dance theatre and the boutique where tourists can spend a fortune to get decked out maiko-style for photos.

It's easy to be distracted, however, for every few minutes there's another maiko – popping out of a teahouse, ducking into a limo, scurrying down an alleyway – and we all lunge for our cameras. Peter offers character sketches as we snap away: “That one's on her way to school. She's what they call an egg – not hatched yet ... That's one of the oldest geisha in Kyoto. She's got a really earthy sense of humour ... This one I call ‘the grump.' ”

Then, as we enter the grounds of the local Zen temple, a girl of nine or 10 comes running full-tilt at our guide and leaps into his arms, yelling, “Peee-taah!” It seals the impression that this is more than a guided tour to a special world; it's also a walk around Peter's neighbourhood.

The tour takes us next through the noisy, glitzy Gion district, and winds up at the romantic willow- and cherry-lined canal where important scenes of Memoirs of a Geisha were shot. There, we thank our guide, pause to admire the view, then turn back to the quiet, darkening streets of Miyagawa, hoping for one more glimpse of maiko. Robert Ward is the author of All the Good Pilgrims: Tales of the Camino de Santiago