Observe
That Foreigners Are Wrong In Calling The Japanese Houses Of
Entertainment Indiscriminately "Tea-Houses." A Tea-House Or Chaya
Is A House At Which You Can Obtain Tea And Other Refreshments,
Rooms To Eat Them In, And Attendance.
That which to some extent
answers to an hotel is a yadoya, which provides sleeping
accommodation and food as required.
The licenses are different.
Tea-houses are of all grades, from the three-storied erections, gay
with flags and lanterns, in the great cities and at places of
popular resort, down to the road-side tea-house, as represented in
the engraving, with three or four lounges of dark-coloured wood
under its eaves, usually occupied by naked coolies in all attitudes
of easiness and repose. The floor is raised about eighteen inches
above the ground, and in these tea-houses is frequently a matted
platform with a recess called the doma, literally "earth-space," in
the middle, round which runs a ledge of polished wood called the
itama, or "board space," on which travellers sit while they bathe
their soiled feet with the water which is immediately brought to
them; for neither with soiled feet nor in foreign shoes must one
advance one step on the matted floor. On one side of the doma is
the kitchen, with its one or two charcoal fires, where the coolies
lounge on the mats and take their food and smoke, and on the other
the family pursue their avocations. In almost the smallest tea-
house there are one or two rooms at the back, but all the life and
interest are in the open front.
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