While I was in Tokyo I drank a lot of green tea, I absolutely love the stuff. Now I am a person that does not like coffee or tea very much, but green tea is just different for me. I just find very soothing and relaxing and just love its faint smell which kind of reminds me of algae or seaweed paper which I ate many times. I had the privilege of participating in a tea ceremony activity which is an interesting experience. The tea ceremony is a very ancient tradition in Japan having been practiced since the 9th century. We were ushered five at a time into this small room with tatami mats. In this room there were three older women dressed in beautiful kimonos who were tending the tea making equipment. We were explained the basic steps on how to do the ceremony. First we were presented with a plate of candies of which we picked one and placed it on a napkin. The pieces of candy were beautiful as you can see for yourself in the picture below, they have a very Japanese aesthetic.
Beautiful little candies
They were almost too nice to eat, supposedly the tea can upset you stomach if it is empty so we ate the candies. After-wards the tea is made, hot water is poured into a cup from a large pot then the tea powder is put in and is then mixed very thoroughly till the is a layer of foam in the cup. You are then given the cup at which point you turn it 180 degrees, the reason for the spinning of the cup is that you are presented the cup with the side you are supposed to drink from facing away from you. The spinning of the cup is a mark of respect and is an important part of tea ceremony etiquette. You then drink the tea slowly, the green foam has a very bitter taste and the tea is a bit thick. We were then offered the change to try to mix a cup of green tea. I failed to mix the tea as I did not mix it fast enough to get it to foam. The picture below is me in my attempt to make a cup.
Me trying to make tea
In the end I quite enjoyed having participated in a Japanese tradition. While we are on the topic of tea, I was surfing the web and I found these cool and unique example of packaging for tea bags. My favorite being an origami tea bag depicting a bird, what can I say I am a sucker for anything Japanese. Tea bags aren’t the most interesting thing and I had not though of them as something that could have an interesting design but I was wrong. It is always wonderful to discover things that you had never though of, it is one of the many joys of life.
