Golden Gate Park is San Francisco is usually the place you take your out-of-town tourist friends; you got the DeYoung, the Academy of Sciences and it’s a short walk from the oldest Japanese tea garden in the United States. But many Japanese American city leaders are pissed that the garden’s tea and gift shop, owned by a Chinese American, isn’t culturally sensitive enough:
Dawkins [the great-great-grandson of landscape designer Makoto Hagiwara] and other would like to see more high-quality, traditional types of green tea offered, plus servers who are dressed appropriately and trained in traditional Japanese tea service.
That’s a fancy way of saying, “WE’RE PISSED THAT THE TEA SERVERS ARE CHINESE-AMERICAN AND NOT JAPANESE-AMERICAN AND WE’RE EVEN MORE PISSED THAT TOURISTS CAN’T TELL THE DIFFERENCE. ALSO WTF THIS ISN’T A RANCH 99.”
Let’s all be honest here: Japanese-Americans in the Bay Area are fairly assimilated in American culture. Japantown sells manga and delicious crepes and the stores around it cater to Korean immigrants. Hell, the the great-great-grandson of the park landscape designer has the last name of Dawkins. I’m all for cultural authenticity, but from what I understand, Japanese cultural authenticity in the Bay Area? You’re looking at it.
One of the challenges for the current operator has been balancing what’s traditional with what sells, said Vince Lo, whose family also holds the concession at Coit Tower.
“We now dedicate a whole section of the gift shop to selling books about Japanese gardens and origami, even though they don’t really make money,” he said.
YOU HEAR THAT? THEY SELL ORIGAMI! They also sell Gundam toys by the main gate. Schooled ya, muthafuckas.
