a tea ceremony & that time we wore kimonos

Before visiting the Hakone Japanese Tea Gardens, I had never seen a traditional tea ceremony. Everything was really simple and elegant. As you enter the tea house garden, you forget your outside worries and clear your mind. You clean your hands with fresh water from the bamboo pipe, take off your shoes and sit on the mats in the tea house.

There were only six of us, so two people we didn't know joined us. They turned out to be our tea-lady's husband and son, coming to see her work for the first time. They were so cute! Her husband had a little camcorder and her son just made the sweetest little faces as he watched his mama.

The tea is reallllllllly bitter. Before you drink any, they give you sweets to have sugar residue in your mouth, but it doesn't help all that much. Although I'll need a lot of time to get used this kind of tea, the tradition is really beautiful.

Oh yeah... and then we got to wear kimonos!

hakone japanese tea gardens

On Friday, I went to the Hakone Japanese Tea Gardens in Saratoga. My roommate, Jenna, is president of the campus Japanese Club and invited me to tag along because they had extra spots. These gardens are surreal. I've been to the tea gardens in Golden Gate Park but these have a different, serene vibe to them. All of the colors are true to nature and the whole garden has a sense of peace and harmony. During our little tour I found out that some scenes from Memoirs of a Geisha were filmed here, in the "moon viewing" house that sits on top of the hill. The gardens were originally built as a getaway for a family who lived in San Francisco, and after seeing the place, I can't imagine why they didn't just stay here.

We also got to attend a tea ceremony, a kimono demonstration and went out to enjoy a feast of delicious Japanese food in San Jose's Japantown afterward... but more on that later.