Japan Day 3: Drinking tea while seated uncomfortably

This was the day to sleep off the jet lag. We rolled out of the hotel at 10:30 to make an 11:00am tea ceremony at the Hotel Okura that our concierge had organized. We passed by the American embassy on the way there, a decidedly paranoid place. You couldn't even walk on the same side of the street as the embassy - guards bowed politely as you approached and asked you to cross the street. I wasn't going to try and take pictures since that might lead to an interrogation. Besides, it was an ugly cement building.

Thanks to the reliable Tokyo subway (and our somehow miraculous ability to understand the street signs that morning), we got to the tea ceremony on time. Although it's in a hotel, the tea ceremony is held by a small patio garden (which is probably nicer in the spring and summer), and once you walk in you've forgotten that there's a generic hotel hallway behind you. You're immediately looking a small rock garden and fountain:

 We were instructed on how to wash your hands properly for the ceremony. You scoop the water up with the ladle and importantly, when you rinse you hands, don't get any of the water back in to the small pool. That's so the water stays pure for the next guest.

We were served by a woman who was probably in her 60s (it's sometimes just hard to tell - she looked younger, but could have been 70 for all I know), and told us she had been doing tea ceremonies for 10 years. After we washed our hands, we sat on a low bench while she prepared a concentrated green tea drink that was very strong and bitter, but surprisingly refreshing. As she worked, it was clear that every movement was exactly choreographed - the stirring spoon, for example, could only be put down in a specific way and handled just so.

The next part of the tea ceremony was in the small tea house that was part of the room. We sat on tatami mats and thin cushions, and you're supposed to sit on your feet, legs folded back, like our hostess is:

I don't know about you, but I'm not a master yogi. Robin is more practiced than I am, but I can't sit like this comfortably for very long. She made it look natural - and we actually saw a number of people sitting down like this at restaurants. But I think you're supposed to sit like that while you enjoy your tea. Our hostess explained the origins of the tea ceremony - it was originally started and conducted by samurai. It's only in more recent history that women serve tea. She poured us regular green tea and it was over. The ceremony was somehow a little less elaborate than we imagined, but did last about 30 or 40 minutes.

Fueled by several cups of green tea and the power bars we'd had for breakfast (we were running late that morning), we were starving and headed directly to lunch at daidaiya, a modern Japanese restaurant on the 12th floor of a high rise. We sat in a tatami room again, but this one helpfully had a space under the table for our inflexible Western legs. We ordered set lunches of tempura and other interesting (and usually identifiable) more modern interpretations of Japanese food. Mine had various sashimi and fish, too. These upscale restaurants have more "reasonable" lunch menus, so it will only set you back about $40 or $50/person with drinks. And we're on vacation, so we sampled the sake to balance out all the tea before striking out for the rest of the day.

Next up: The Imperial Palace, endless hours of kabuki, and some no frills sushi.