SweetPersimmon

I love to enter the tea room, view the scroll and flowers and smell the incense.   The tea room is a safe place where the rules of etiquette...

Guest Etiquette for Chanoyu, the Japanese Tea Ceremony Have you ever attended a Japanese Tea Ceremony? If you know the proper things to do ...

I hope everyone had a happy new year celebration.  I apologize for the long absence from the blog, but I had to take care of a few family ma...

Like any formal invitation,  an invitation to a tea gathering will have a time, date and place.   But look closer at the invitation.  The h...

In chado, there are usually three levels of formality designated as shin, gyo and so. These are formal, semi-formal, and informal. This ...

I have talked with many people who don't like rules. These people think that too many rules in tea restrict them and don't allow th...

"Guest and host both joined as one, share a bowl of tea. In tranquil meditation, no margin divides their hearts. The tea garden is a wa...

At the appropriate time (when the lid is placed on the cold water jar), the first guest will ask the host to examine and appreciate the uten...

Aisatsu is the formal greetings before and at the end of class. In the beginning we place the fan in front of us and we ask our sensei to t...

I have a class graduating from the 10 week introductory class and we are holding our final chakai (tea gathering) in a few days at Kashintei...

I was invited to a formal tea gathering for Hatsugama last night. The host called me a week ago and asked if I would be the shokyaku (the p...

The etiquette of receiving a bowl of tea at a tea ceremony may seem somewhat tedious as there is a lot of handling and moving the bowl aroun...

The end of the year is fast approaching. The Japanese have a tradition of preparing for the new year by cleaning and settling up so that on...

Learning the Japanese words during tea class is not necessary, but it does help with the discipline of learning something new. At the reque...

Kansha is a part of the etiquette for receiving tea and sweets. Before taking sweets, the tray or bowl is lifted slightly from the floor as...

I have a new class of students this term. I always ask them at the beginning of the term what they think that they will be learning for the...