What is it like to be a geisha? I hated it. The wig itched, my back ached, and about 1,000 tourists mobbed me for photos. Then again, I was only a maiko, or novice geisha, for a day. Geisha "transformation" services are all the rage in the ancient temple town of Kyoto, where a girl -- or, in fact, a boy -- can dress up as a geisha. So my experience is pretty shallow. But Liza Dalby's is not. While in her 20s, Dalby, an American, became the first and only Westerner to enter the so-called "world of willows and flowers." Researching geisha for a doctorate in anthropology, she became one herself: Ichigiku of Pontocho. She later wrote about her unique, insiders' experience in "Geisha" (University of California Press, 1983), and subsequently became the leading American expert on the subject. Author Arthur Golden studied her work for his best-selling book "Memoirs of a Geisha," and Steven Spielberg has hired her as his consultant for the film version of Golden's book. Dalby is also the author of "The Tale of Murasaki" (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2000), a historical novel set in 11th- century Japan featuring the heroine, Lady Murasaki Shikibu. Dalby spoke to TIME's Lisa Cullen. Edited excerpts:

What do you think of phony geishas like me who don kimonos and makeup and tromp around town for just a day?
The only thing that bothers geisha about the fakes is that they're often mistaken for the real thing. They hang out in places where foreigners and other tourists go, and those people usually can't tell the difference. Some of the girls don't watch their language; they chew gum; they even smoke! It's really unbecoming.

I didn't chew gum.
That's good.

And I was really hungry.
Uh huh.

What made you become a geisha?
I was interested in studying geisha as a group of working women with a long tradition in Japan. But I never ever thought I'd end up doing what I did. After starting my research in Tokyo, I went to Kyoto for what I thought would be a brief visit to look into the regional differences in geisha tradition. I ended up spending most of my year there. While I was interviewing the woman who became my geisha "mother," she said to me, "You can talk to us all you like during the day when there are no customers, but you'll never understand until you see us working at night." So she borrowed a kimono for me from a tall geisha, and that's how it started.

Just like that.
Yeah, and I was in my mid-20s -- which is really too old to be a maiko [novice geisha].

Do you think it's unseemly that I pretended to be a maiko at 29?
I've heard even old ladies get dressed up in maiko costumes these days.

You're a "gaijin" -- a foreigner. Why did they let you in?
I had a peculiar set of qualifications. One was that on my first trip to Japan as a teenager, I became fascinated with the shamisen [a lute-like string instrument]. It turned out to be a great way to get into the geisha world because it gave me credibility. Another qualification was that I could speak Japanese, and yet another was the ability to sit in the Japanese style for many hours. Everybody talks about the standoffishness of Japanese society, and in fact it did take me some time to get to know these people. But when I did, they really took me in.

Is being a geisha still about sex?
No. And it hasn't been for a long time. Geisha exist to preserve traditional art. I'd liken it to the kabuki dynasties -- the last bastion of a certain kind of performing arts.

What about the geishas' male patrons? I mean, I can't imagine they just want to watch them dance.
Most geisha have patrons, yes, for economic as well as emotional reasons. Geisha don't marry -- if they marry, they give up being a geisha. The relationships with the patrons tend to be long lasting. In any case, their sex life is very much their own private business. I don't think it's helpful to talk about it as prostitution.

Just who are these patrons?
Businessmen, mostly, and politicians -- as some recent scandals will attest.

After your book "Geisha" came out, were there a lot of American girls who wanted to become one?
Over the years I've received a ton of letters from women who think they do. At one point I practically ran a geisha-wanna-be counseling service on my computer. Some of the women are drawn to the geisha life in a weird kind of feminist way: they want to join a community of professional women who don't marry, devote themselves to their art, and lead glamorous lives. But that's just as unrealistic as the male fantasy of the geisha.

Was your geisha training hard? Like, could I do it?
A lot of the training is on the job. A young geisha starting out goes along with her "older sister" and doesn't say much; she just learns by watching. That relationship with the older sister teaches you about kinship and authority -- the ceremony in which you become sisters is a lot like a marriage ceremony. The thing that draws women to the profession today is interest in the traditional arts, which the geisha specialize in. As a maiko, I could already play the shamisen, even better than some of the young Japanese geisha. But I had to learn the style played at banquets, where they like to hear short songs.

What's the hardest part about becoming a geisha?
For Japanese girls, I think it's learning how to be comfortable around men. They have to overcome their upbringing. Japanese girls aren't socialized to talk freely and easily with men. And then there are the customs of the geisha world, particularly in Kyoto -- the proper greetings to the older sister and such. Most girls take three to four years to train; they learn to turn themselves into a work of art, with their dress, face, and manner. But they spend most of the time learning the art that they present to clients, which is primarily dance or music. Being a dancer is the more glamorous skill -- "maiko," in fact, means dancer -- so that's what most of the girls want to learn. But perhaps the hardest part is learning to wear the kimono for hours on end.

How fast is the geisha community shrinking?
Fast. But that could change. Compared to 25 years ago, there's a new glamour attached to being a geisha. Everybody knows about Arthur Golden's book, "Memoirs of a Geisha," and the Steven Spielberg movie based on the book. Nowadays, young girls are starstruck by maiko. I've heard the Kyoto registry office is having a hard time weeding out those who aren't serious.

I'm sure the lousy economy doesn't help sustain the geisha business.
That's right. One of the reasons they call it the "water business" is because it's closely tied to the swells in the economy. Corporations are the geishas' major clients. If companies aren't doing well, they're not going to pay for geisha services. In a community like Pontocho, there were between 80 and 100 geisha working when I was there [in the late '70s]. In the '80s, the numbers shot up because times were so good. They dropped again in the '90s.

"Memoirs of a Geisha" portrayed the viciousness or backstabbing in the geisha community. Was there a lot of that in your days?
Not in my experience, but that's probably because I worked in Pontocho. There's a sharp difference in status among the five geisha communities in Kyoto. The Gion, Pontocho and Kamishichiken geisha districts are the most prestigious, and there's great respect among the geisha who work there. If you went to a fancy party in the Higashiyama area, for instance, you'd see geisha from all three of those districts working harmoniously together.

Your life is literally a world away now from the back streets of Pontocho. What's stuck with you from that experience?
The one thing that stuck with me the longest was the sense of being in an all- women community. I expected to find a lot of competition -- after all, they were all competing for the same resources, the same customers. But after the clients went home, the geishas only had each other.