Saturday's peaceful postcard

This undated postcard (probably from the 1960s) features the "Waiting Room for ceremonial tea" at the Mikyato Hotel in Kyoto, Japan, a city that dates to 794. It's a beautiful location, with its waterfall, boulders, bushes, gravel and small structure that blends perfectly with its surrounding. It believe it's called a chashitsu, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

According to Wikipedia:

"The term chashitsu came into use after the start of the Edo period (c. 1600). In earlier times, various terms were used for spaces used for tea ceremony, such as chanoyu zashiki (茶湯座敷, "sitting room for chanoyu"), sukiya (place for poetically inclined aesthetic pursuits [fūryū, 風流]) such as chanoyu), and kakoi (囲, "partitioned-off space"). An account stated that it was the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa who built the first chashitsu at his Higashiyama villa in Kyoto. It was described as a small room of four-and-a-half tatami and was separated from the main residence."

This location may still exist, though it's surely been modified over the decades. And of course tea ceremonies for tourists are much more commercialized. It's likely there are multiple hotel-based ceremonial tea room experiences offered in Kyoto. This website for Miyako Hotel Kyoto Hachijo offers a "Japanese tea ceremony experience wearing kimono" for 10,000 yen (about $64 today). 

And I found a 2023 article by The Mainichi newspaper that features some photos that look like they might be of the same location shown on this postcard. 

Ringing in the holly-jolly month with a vintage Christmas postcard

Somehow, December returned.

We're now in the Yuletide countdown and the countdown to 2026, so there will be some holiday-themed posts sprinkled across this month, even though it's 70 degrees today in the Sonoran desert.

Papergreat has featured more then 200 posts themed "Christmas" over its decade and a half of existence. I haven't actually updated the directory since 2000, but this post will get you to dozens upon dozens of past posts, if jingle bells are your jam.

Today's postcard is a Whitney Made card that was postmarked at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve in 1915 and mailed to Clara Hoff of Berkeley, California. The short cursive note on the back states: 

Dear Clara

I wish you all the good things your stockings can possibly hold.

Mrs. Schneider

The image on the front of the postcard features Santa Claus holding up a lantern so he can double-check his list while on someone's porch. The message states:

I'LL BE THERE TO-NIGHT

SO TURN DOWN YOUR LIGHT

HANG UP YOUR STOCKING

AND CLOSE YOUR EYES TIGHT

The idea that you're not supposed to see Santa Claus is a superstition that has persisted through the decades. When being interviewed for the Dartmouth Folklore Archive in 2021, 18-year-old L.M. stated:

“Me and my younger cousin Mallory every year had an app on our Mom’s phones called Santa Tracker. We would track Santa while he was flying around delivering presents around dessert time to make sure he wouldn’t come to our house before we were asleep because we wouldn’t get any presents. Santa’s not going to give you any presents unless you’re in bed and asleep. If you weren’t in bed when Santa came it meant you were naughty and got Coal in your stocking, that's what our Moms told us.”

A pair of mystery snapshots

Today we have a pair of small old snapshots. Found photos for which the stories and histories are no longer attached and may never be reunited. First up is this snapshot, which is 2¾ inches wide by 4½ inches tall. It shows a woman in what appears to be a bathrobe standing in mostly dirt yard with a child. A dog lays in the background, near a gate. 

The writing on the front states 1924 and "Marie & Caroline."

The names also appear on the back, where the date is now June 1925, one full century ago.

That's it. We don't know where this is, whose scrapbook it came from or what ever happened to Marie & Caroline.

This photo, just 3½ inches by 2½ inches, features a couple reclining in a bed. There's a cursive caption on the back, but it doesn't help us with who they are or when this was taken. It states: "Here is our bed. We were going to be silly but that is what the head of our bed looks like."

If I were forced to make a guess, I'd say this one was taken sometime in the 1940s or 1950s.

Upon closer examination, the photo is a little weird. At first I thought maybe it was taken from outside, through a bedroom window that caused some reflections. But upon closer examination I realized it's a double exposure. If you look closely, you can see the faint image of another woman to the right of the woman in the bed. No, it's not a ghost. Definitely a double exposure. Possibly of the same woman. I miss the days when I might have excitedly claimed it to be a ghost photo, though.

I've had a ton of mystery photos and mystery real photo postcards on Papergreat in the past. Alas, there's no single directory of all of them, but one good place to dive in, if you're interested, is this 2021 post.