The Dao of Tea

On 9th Street, between 2nd and 3rd Avenues is Cha-An, a Japanese restaurant that has a tearoom for the 'performance' of the Japanese Tea Ceremony.  Dottie and I went last night.  The first picture is of our hostess in the Mizuya area beginning the cleaning of the bowl that we will use to drink our tea.  She will use a small linen cloth called the Chakin to clean and wipe the bowl.  She will unfold it from her kimono; fold it in a particular pattern; wipe the bowl; unfold it and then fold it in another pattern and put it back in her kimono.  The guests drink from the same bowl, and this is done after each serving.  The ceremony can take up to 40 minutes.  At the end of the ceremony she discusses what she has been doing. She also showed us and let us handle the Chashaku.  A thin narrow bamboo like spoon used to scoop the tea.  It was her grandmother's, and that is a particular part of the ceremony: to share and use something with a personal connection.

In the 'Tokonoma' area is a scroll with calligraphy.  Our scroll translates as 'today safe'.  Our hostess explained that it is meant to say: "a quiet day is a safe day and a safe day is a good day." 

But before the tea you eat some sweets.  Red bean sweets and they are very sweet.
There are two basic tea ceremonies.  Chaji, which involves a full course meal and can take up to 4 hours and Chakai, simple sweets and then tea.  The tea is taken from the buds of the green tea leaf and ground up.  It is the richest part of the plant having the most caffeine and is also very expensive.  It is called Matcha.
Tea first came to Japan in the 9th century but it wasn't until the 15th when Murata Juko developed the tea ceremony as we now know it.  In the 16th century Sen no Rikyu wrote in his book 'Southern Record' the principles of the ceremony: harmony, respect, purity, and tranquility.  Both of them were Zen Buddhist monks and Zen Buddhism is the primary influence in the development of the ceremony.  Our evening certainly lived up to the principles.