“After the Panama-California Exposition closed in 1916, the City of San Diego decided to ask a local Japanese couple to run the tea house. My mother wanted to try running a business, so we moved into tiny living quarters at the back of the tea house. I slept in the attic over the bathroom. I had a lot of jobs, as the eldest child. We painted the bridges every three years, and replaced the rice paper shoji screens. We trimmed the plants, and harvested bamboo shoots for food.

After we opened the tea house to the public, we sold tea and noodles, and served them on the porch that surrounded the building on three sides. My mother created green tea ice cream by mixing the tea powder into the ice cream. Inside there were traditional tatami mats made of bamboo on the floors, and my mother had a small gift shop where she sold small things imported from Japan. In later years, there were beautiful wisteria arbors in the garden, and a Japanese photographer took a photograph of my mother in her kimono, posing in front of the wisteria.”