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Updated: July 18, 2025
Here it was stifling. Cattle stood in stagnant water, ducks were envied, my room with the sun on it became intolerable, and I sought refuge by the river; my butter was too liquid to spread; coolies were tired as they rested outside the tea-houses, having not a cash to spend; my pony stood wincing, giving sharp shivers to his skin, and moving his tail to clear off the flies and his hind legs to clear off men.
Through all this discourse about temples and tea-houses, I am coming by degrees to the goal of our pilgrimage two old stones, mouldering away in a rank, overgrown graveyard hard by, an old old burying-ground, forgotten by all save those who love to dig out the tales of the past. The key is kept by a ghoulish old dame, almost as time-worn and mildewed as the tomb over which she watches.
Here the foreign settlements are traversed in all directions by excellent highways, which extend through the suburbs for several miles into the adjoining country, and which the Chinese avail themselves of to a large extent, driving out in thousands every afternoon to tea-houses and pleasure-gardens.
There were no fires in the grates, because, being June, the weather ought to have been warm; and the electric lights were not turned on, because, being daytime, there ought to have been light. He liked the smoking-room. "It is more like one of our big tea-houses," he said. "Men do business here," pointing to a man with a sheaf of papers talking earnestly to another beside him.
As a child he has taken many a trip with his father and mother to admire the acres of plum or cherry blossom in a park or temple-garden; as a man he lays his work aside and goes to see the same spectacle with redoubled delight. "For his heart is in Japan, with its junks and Fujisan, And its tea-houses and temples, and the smiling rickshaw-man."
They pursued us wherever we went, and when we entered a tea-house or shop the whole crowd immediately stopped, and if we retired to the back they surged all over the front premises, and penetrated into the interior as far as they could. A most amusing scene took place at one of the tea-houses, where we went to order some provisions for the yacht.
Yet, withal, they seem to be only humorously miserable, and not by any means seriously displeased with the rawness and the snow. Straw wind-breaks are set up on the windward side of the tea-houses, and there is much stopping among pedestrians to gather around the tea-house braziers and gossip and smoke. Everybody in Japan smokes, both men and women.
Below, the "Happy Valley" stretches myriads of miles away, of green in shadow and gold in sunshine, all of uttermost beauty. There are steps of stone that one may arrive at Tea-houses higher up mountain side. I beg of Miss Sterling that I may to leave chair and mount up steps. All girls come and we climb, making readings of rocks as we go.
The tea-houses, as well as the shops and dwelling-houses, were all open, exposing each domestic arrangement to the public. The floors of these country houses are slightly raised from the ground, say one step, and covered with neat straw carpeting, upon which the family and visitors "squat" and take their refreshments.
"Oh, those are the hikité chaya" said Yaé glibly, "the Yoshiwara tea-houses." "Do they live there?" asked Asako. "Oh, no; rich men who come to the Yoshiwara do not go to the big houses where the oiran live. They go to the tea-houses; and they order food and geisha to sing, and the oiran to be brought from the big house. It is more private.
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