Today I spent the day in
Yokohama Chinatown for Michiko's birthday. We tried a Chinese teahouse. Our server was Taiwanese but spoke Japanese. We ordered two different kinds of teas and our server prepared a complicated ceremony for us using many different bowls and miniature pots. It was really fun and if you're in Yokohama, you should absolutely go to a Chinese teahouse.
The black kettle is cooking over a flame. You have a small teapot and you use the black kettle to pour hot water not only into your teapot, but also over top of it so that it spills into a bowl it sits in. The excess water is the poured into that brown pot in the picture below.
Then the teapot is strained into a glass teapot and finally, that is put into a miniature tall glass. That miniature tall glass is the flipped over into a miniature wide glass. You can see the tall and wide glasses in the picture below. The tall glass is only for smelling. It's so cool. The server lets you smell the glass and decide if the tea is suitable. That's the only point of having the tall glass. By the way, just to let you know that if you go to a teahouse and you're vegetarian, don't eat the little pastry you see in the picture. Chinese egg tarts are almost always made with lard (boiled animal fat). But if you eat meat, by all means try the tart! They're probably tasty.
We also messed around with the centerpiece. We like lotus flowers.
Fancy ladies in lotus table-centerpiece birthday hats.
Here is a photograph I found of a family in
Yokohama from 1910. It's a great place to visit if you're interested in history.
PS. My dad called me last night and it made my week!!
The black kettle is cooking over a flame. You have a small teapot and you use the black kettle to pour hot water not only into your teapot, but also over top of it so that it spills into a bowl it sits in. The excess water is the poured into that brown pot in the picture below.
Then the teapot is strained into a glass teapot and finally, that is put into a miniature tall glass. That miniature tall glass is the flipped over into a miniature wide glass. You can see the tall and wide glasses in the picture below. The tall glass is only for smelling. It's so cool. The server lets you smell the glass and decide if the tea is suitable. That's the only point of having the tall glass. By the way, just to let you know that if you go to a teahouse and you're vegetarian, don't eat the little pastry you see in the picture. Chinese egg tarts are almost always made with lard (boiled animal fat). But if you eat meat, by all means try the tart! They're probably tasty.
We also messed around with the centerpiece. We like lotus flowers.
Fancy ladies in lotus table-centerpiece birthday hats. 
Here is a photograph I found of a family in Yokohama from 1910. It's a great place to visit if you're interested in history. 
PS. My dad called me last night and it made my week!!
1 comments:
thank you for the advice on the tarts. i am vegetarian and looking for any tips that will help me out when i go to japan becuase by then i will most likly become vegan...even though i know it might be a bit difficult as is
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