I've been to San Francisco many times, and while I now know my way around enough as well as many locals, I never really feel like I'm in the United States when I'm there. It's so exotic compared to the Midwest or South, or even the Northeast. Nowhere is the influence of the Far East as evident as at the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park.

My sister who has lived there for more than half her life, has always expressed a desire to take me to the Japanese Tea Garden, but there is never enough time; because she really doesn't like to go into the city, but would rather whale watch from her front yard at Stinson Beach. I can hardly blame her.

But now my daughter lives there and she loves to take us touring. As a matter of fact we have been with her on many occasion with her as she experiences one of the city's gems for the first time herself.

On a recent visit we made time to at last get to the Japanese Tea Garden. Not unexpectedly, my sister wasn't with us.

The peacefullness which permeates the garden, I'm certain is due to the centuries of study the Japanese culture has put into creating such gardens. I was told the garden is the oldest public Japanese garden in the United States and it was created as a Japanese Village at the 1894 World's Fair. It is a combination of wet walking gardens and a Zen Garden. The day we visited, a young bride, swathed in lush silk, was being photographed with her groom. Our daughter was to be married in two days, in a very non-traditional dress and ceremony. I pined for her to have a penchant for tradition, which I of course did not cultivate in her as a young rebellious mother myself.

But here we were emersed in centures of a culture we had no understanding of except that it was steeped in tradition as our tea steeped in pots that hadn't changed shapes in the same length of time.

Tea never tasted so good. We were freezing of course. Mark Twain said it all when he said, "The coldest winter I ever spent was the summer in San Francisco." We drive or daughter nuts with that saying.

My husband, not always one to bend to "doing as the Romans do, when in Rome," actually ordered tea with us, and I was delighted how he took to the rice crackers, making me buy several packets at outrageous prices to take back to the hotel with us.

It was a peaceful visit that could have been frought with tension and anxiety. This ancient culture embracing us as if it were our own.

We could see the happiness in our daughter's face, and we were reassured by her peace, believing she was confident in her choice.

I won't soon forget that afternoon spent in the tea garden with those two I spent so many years with as she grew up in our home, from infant, to toddler to gangly preteen, to trendy teen until she left, getting into a small compact car with two buddies to strike out on her own driving 3,000 miles to this distant coastal city she loves so much.