The real "Afternoon Tea"

My mother came and went. She's still in Japan, but she's staying with my grandparents in Tokyo, where all the other bazillion of my Japanese relatives live. We had a wonderful four days together, going on a delicious Hokkaido gourmet tour of Sapporo and Otaru cities. Due to that, today was supposed to be a "salad day" for me, but I've already failed by munching on a chocolate pie thing from Hakodate. Damn Japan and its omiyage (souvenir) culture.

I held an "Afternoon Tea" cooking class last Saturday. My International Exchange Section holds International Cooking classes during the year for non-Japanese people living in the city to introduce locals dishes from their home countries. As it was our first time, I held a British-themed class by giving presentations on U.K. through trusty Powerpoint slides, then teaching them to make super easy scones via frying pans and enjoying "cream tea" (ovens are not readily available here). We handed out questionnaires for the participants to fill in after we had finished, and it was quite amusing to read about the images of the U.K. that filled up their little Japanese minds. Overall the comments of the class were positive, but some said things along the lines of "It was a shame that we used tea bags", and "I had hoped to learn more on the details of brewing tea". I don't mean to crush their bigged up images of Britain, but I don't think I know of any English person who actually goes to the trouble of brewing tea through tea leaves in a tea pot. I can imagine the dear Japanese old ladies' (a large majority who took part in the class were women in their 40s onwards) looks of horror if they do have the chance to visit England - in place of their admired after, dainty Victorian ladies in corsets sipping Earl Grey from their delicately decorated china cups fat, they would see dirty builder men with their jeans sagging around their arse, holding giant mugs with the PG tips teabag tag dangling at the side.