CHAPTER XV
TEA-HOUSES AND TEMPLES
Tea-houses and temples run together very easily in the Japanese mind, for
wherever you find a temple there you also find a tea-house. But tea-houses
are not confined to the neighbourhood of temples: they are everywhere. The
tea-house is the house of public entertainment in Japan, and varies from
the tiny cabin with straw roof, a building which is filled by half a dozen
coolies drinking their tea, to large and beautiful structures, with floors
and ceilings of polished woods, splendid mats, and tables of ebony and
gold.
The tea-house does not sell tea alone. It will lodge you and find you
dinners and suppers, and is in country places the Japanese hotel. If
tea-houses sold tea and nothing else it is certain that European travellers
would be in a very bad way, for there is one point they are all agreed
upon, and that is that the tea, as a rule, is quite unpalatable to a
Western taste. However, it does not matter in the least whether you
drink it or not as long as you pay your money, and the last is no great
tax--about three halfpence.
When a traveller steps into a tea-house the girl attendants, the moosmes,
gay in their scarlet petticoats, kneel before him, and, if it is an
out-of-the-way place, where the old fashions are kept up, place their
foreheads on the matting. Then away they run to fetch the tea. Japanese
servants always run when they wish to show respect; to walk would look
careless and disrespectful in their eyes.
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