The Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park was constructed for the 1894 California Midwinter Exposition and has operated in some form ever since — the oldest public Japanese garden in the United States. The moon bridge crosses a small pond; the pagoda reads against the trees; the teahouse serves matcha and fortune cookies, which were invented here during the exposition years. The garden occupies five acres and takes thirty minutes to walk at the pace the paths suggest. The correct visit is before ten in the morning, when the coaches have not yet arrived and the gate has been open long enough for the light to have found the water. The garden is not a recreation of something elsewhere; it is the thing itself, planted and maintained for over a century in a city that was shaped by the Pacific from the beginning.
Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, United States