What woman can't use some lessons in feminine allure? Shoba Narayan travels to Kyoto to pick up some tips from the masters—the city's renowned geishas. Trust us—there's much more to Japan's most enduring icons than white face-paint and a bee-stung pout

I have come to Japan to learn about allure. I've been married for seventeen years, and while my marriage isn't falling apart, it is fraying at the edges: a victim of minutiae like leaky taps, lost airline tickets, and PTA meetings. Nowadays when I ask my husband a fairly innocuous question such as, "Does this green dress suit me?" he gets this deer-in-the-headlights expression. I want Ram to look at me without fear and with adoration. So I have come to Japan to learn about feminine allure from its acknowledged masters: the geisha.

Suzuno-san thinks I shouldn't even be asking questions. Suzuno-san is a Tokyo geisha. Like most Japanese, she is slim and beautiful with high cheekbones, Dior-red lips, and a chignon worn at the nape, which the Japanese consider the sexiest part of a woman. This is why geisha and maiko (apprentice geisha) wear their kimono low on the neck, the nape revealed. Suzuno-san is in her forties, maybe fifties. I cannot ask. Geisha don't reveal their age anyway. She teaches etiquette and bemoans the rising informality of her culture. "These manners are part of who we are," she says. "It is what defines us as Japanese."

We meet at Fucha-ryori Bon, a lovely restaurant with tatami-lined cubicles inside which patrons can have lunch in rice paper-screened privacy. Over the next hour, I learn how to pick up a soup bowl (one hand on the side and one underneath), how to slurp udon noodles, how to sip green tea, how to place my chopsticks when I am done eating, and also how to treat a man.

Suzuno-san says that peppering a man with questions is a big no-no, something she tells all her maiko. Questions put a man on the defensive. "I may know a lot about politics, but I won't reveal it," she says. "Instead, I will draw him out."

This whole notion of playing dumb bothers me, and I tell her so. Hasn't she heard of feminism? Her interpretation is different. She plays dumb not because she is a woman and he is a man. She does it because she is a professional and he is her client. It has more to do with hierarchy than gender. Japanese men play dumb with their clients too.

It is a smart answer, but it doesn't help me with my marriage. I can't stop asking my husband questions even though I know it puts him on the defensive. I can, however, learn what Suzuno-san calls respect for both humans and objects. Respect the tatami by leaving your shoes outside. When you cross a room, don't just blunder across. Go behind people so that their conversations are not disturbed. Cover your mouth when you giggle. When you enter a tatami room, don't just walk in. Sit on your haunches and slide across the threshold, then bow deeply to your host while still kneeling.

We finish lunch. My interpreter and I drop Suzuno-san at her street corner before speeding off. I turn around and watch her slide across the broad avenue. With her floral-pink kimono and erect carriage, she looks regal. Alluring.

The dictionary defines allure as "the power to entice or attract through personal charm," which has more to do with gait and bearing than with beauty. The geisha are masters of allure. This, I believe, is why we are fascinated by them. It isn't that they are beautiful, although many of them are. Beauty is a wild card anyway, beyond our control. Sexy, after a certain age, borders on tawdry. Mystique is too much work. But allure, as the geisha so magnificently prove, can be taught and learned. Just like etiquette.