Tea Ceremony and Yokohama

With Nana and David and my Mom tied up taking paper work all over Tokyo to make their marriage legal, that left Lisa and I to explore on our own again. We wanted to see a traditional Japanese Tea Ceremony, while Kurtis wanted to see the Meji-shrine he had not seen in Harajuku yet. This really left Lisa and I to our own devices.




With some very basic directions from Lisa's phone, we headed out in search of the New Otani Hotel Tea Ceremony. We made our way to the right neighborhood just fine, we struggled momentarily finding the hotel in the labyrinth of subway exits. However, we found a map and managed to get out the correct exit and find the hotel. Then the real work began, finding the tea ceremony within this massive hotel complex. We asked the front desk staff who directed us outside into the gardens. We wandered around the gardens for a few minutes before figuring out it just wasn't there. We wandered back inside and proceeded to ask at least 5 other staff members before finally finding the tiny little doorway that housed our tea ceremony.


I had decided before leaving home, that I was still skipping the green tea on this trip. However, I really wanted to participate in a traditional tea ceremony. Lisa and I hatched a plan, that I would feign drinking the tea until the lady left the room at which point Lisa and I would switch cups and she would have mine as well. This would have been a perfect plan, except for the fact that our cups were totally different and the woman would not leave the room. Finally, as Lisa finished her tea, the woman removed Lisa's cup (Doh!) and walked it out of the room. This took all of 5-10 seconds, in which time, Lisa grabbed my cup and managed to guzzle at least 2/3 of my tea, leaving me just a couple of swallows. With both of us trying hard not to burst into a fit of giggles at our deception gone wrong, I finished off the last little bit of the tea in an effort to save ourselves a scene over a tiny bit of green tea. We enjoyed ourselves while we witnessed the ceremony of a Japan of the past.


We were starving from our journey and tea hunt and decided to treat ourselves to a lovely soup and salad lunch in the hotel. The only time Lisa and I felt lost in Japan was when ordering food and trying to pay in a restaurant. This proved to be the most challenging part of having a major language barrier. We tried to watch for clues on how to order and pay from other patrons, but it was time consuming a bit exhausting. After lunch we headed back out to the gardens we had a quick walk through earlier to take some photos and take in the sites.





We had more good fortune watching a couple take engagement photos in traditional dress over a beautiful koi pond. We tried to inconspicuously take photos of the happy couple (which I am sure we failed at being two Gaijin in a garden full of Japanese).











We relaxed and took our time taking in the beautiful scenery and relaxing company before heading back to Akihabara to spend a bit more time perusing the electronics, since we had only made it one store the day before.








Akihabara is also home to the Maids Cafe. It is the Japanese version of Hooters. Girls dressed like maids hand out flyers every 25 feet or so. Apparently this appeals to the many business men in the area.








After Akihabara we raced to Shibuya to meet the rest of the crowd. We found our party who had been lingerie shopping for Nana in the area with no success. Lisa and I had seen some pretty things in a store up the street and made a lame excuse to hold up the group while the 4 of us ran to the store. Once reunited we headed off in the direction of Yokohama to appease my Mom's desire to go. She had been there before when she picked up David from his mission with Scott. She kept raving about the view and how beautiful it was and how we would all love it so. Hesitantly we all braced ourselves for the 2 hour ride out to Yokohama where we entered the building with the fast elevator for the view. We stopped by the Pokemon center where I bought a few more things I couldn't resist for the boys and snapped a million pictures to bring home to them so they could see all the Pokemon wares.

After the Pokemon center we all rode up to the top of the building to take in the views. The views were lovely. We were up quite high and had a good ariel view of the Yokohama/Tokyo area. But taking a 2 hour train ride to get there is kind of like driving to Las Vegas from St. George to take a quick ride up the Stratosphere tower to take in the view and then turn around and drive back to St. George. I am not quite sure why my Mom was so into it, but it seemed to be very important to her to share with us, so we all complied.



During the 2 hour ride home, my Mom said she was not sure what David knew for his wedding night. Her relationship with David is strained at best, and she didn't want to make it more awkward than it already is so she didn't want to broach the "talk" with him. Lisa was willing, but would have offered more information than any of us wanted, so that left me to have the very unenviable "talk" with him. Can I just say that I gave him several opportunities to say "I'm good!" and end the conversation. It took much longer to get to that point than I thought. If having the sex talk with his sister wasn't enough to make him never want to have sex, EVER, I don't know what is. It was benign as could be, but still not fun. It is really a conversation that in a "normal" family would have happened many, many years prior and would have involved parental input, not sibling. Ewwww.... That is a memory that can not be soon enough burned from my mind.