I have a new Introduction to Japanese tea ceremony class beginning in May. More details as I work out the schedule.
Also Issoan tea school will be presenting Japanese tea ceremony at Uwajimaya's Sakura Festival in Beaverton, Oregon on Saturday April 19 at 9:45 am.
Location:
Uwajimaya Parking lot
10500 SW Beaverton-Hillsdale HWY
Beaverton, OR 97005
Phone: (503)643-4512
We had a chabana flower arranging lesson in class recently. Chabana is different from the more well known Japanese flower arranging study of Ikebana. Chabana is flower arranging for tea. According to Rikyu’s rules, one should arrange the flowers as if they were growing in the field. Chabana is also known as thrown in flowers – that is, the flowers are arranged in one breath and put in the vase.
I have already mentioned about looking at flowers before picking them so that you know how they grow and can arrange them according to their nature. Quite often we have an image of how the flowers should look in the vase and then when we put them in, they droop or twist around. Arranging flowers in one breath means to be able to let go and let the flowers arrange themselves. There is the temptation to “fix” the flowers by moving them again and again after they are put in the vase, not just let them do what they would do naturally and leave them alone.
You only get one chance to arrange the flowers, then you have to let them go. It is like doing crosswords with a pen or calligraphy on rice paper. Once you put the mark down, you cannot go back and change it. It becomes what it is at that moment in time. My husband is a woodworker and with wood you only get one chance to cut the wood.
If we are doing things with intention, you don’t go back and re-do it. This is what he refers to as working without a net.
Matcha tea is the powdered green tea used in the Japanese tea ceremony but more people are beginning to drink matcha. Starbucks has a drink called a matcha latte (sorry, I did not finish mine, it’s just not my cup of tea). You can get matcha mixed with sugar and milk and matcha ice cream is often served in Japanese restaurants, plus there are any number of matcha baked goods, candies and other food you can get now days. I even bought a pack of some matcha gum.
I made matcha for my brother-in-law and he said that it was so different when I make it for him. So I thought I would post a little bit here on how to make a good bowl of matcha.
There are different grades of matcha, so if you are making a bowl of matcha to drink, you should get matcha of good quality. Drinking grade matcha is sold in quantities of 40 grams or less (about one and a half ounces) and usually costs from $18- $50 or even more in that quantity. I recommend getting it on the internet from www.tea-circle.com, they have a good selection, or www.matchaandmore.com. (or if you’d like to support me, you can buy it from my site www.SweetPersimmon.com. I only have one kind of matcha, though).
When exposed to air, matcha goes bad quickly. So buy it fresh, and store it in the freezer until you unseal it. When it is opened, it can last for about a month if you put it in the refrigerator. When you first open a can or container of matcha it should be brilliant green and have a good fragrance. If you have a dull green and it doesn’t smell, or smells off, the tea is not good for drinking (you can still use it for cooking or ice cream, though). I usually put it through a sieve or strainer to remove the lumps.
Having a good tea bowl helps in making tea. If you don’t have a tea bowl, a ceramic bowl that is three and a half to four inches in diameter (9-10 cm) and about three inches tall can do. You will also need a bamboo whisk (they can be had from the two places above). It helps to have a bamboo tea scoop, but it isn’t essential.
Make sure you have good water. I use filtered water (don’t use bottled water) and bring it to a boil. I don’t know exactly what the temperature of the water is, but I can tell it is right by the sound of it boiling in my iron kettle. The sound is matsu kaze, (the sound of the wind in the pines). If you don’t have an iron kettle to sing to you, just before it comes to a roiling boil – when there are lots of small bubbles rising to the surface is about right. Heat the bowl by pouring hot water in it and letting it sit for about a minute. Empty the water and wipe the bowl dry.
If you have a bamboo scoop, put two scoops of the powdered tea into the bottom of the bowl. I had to go measure it, but it is between one half to a full teaspoon of matcha depending on how strong you like it. Then add water. Most people who are beginning to make tea put too much hot water in the bowl. I would say that you should pour about one quarter cup (2 oz. or 75 ml) into the bowl with tea in it. I try to pour down the side of the bowl because if you pour hot water directly on the tea powder it splashes up on the sides of the bowl and it’s hard to incorporate it and it looks messy.
Now whisk the tea to a froth. The technique I learned is to put the whisk into the tea bowl and whisk vigorously from 12 o’clock to 6 o’clock, not around in a circle. Just whisk straight across the bowl as fast as you can. You will start to get a bouncing action and the bubbles should start to come up. Use your wrist as well as your whole arm. It helps if the bowl is a lower than your elbow. (I use a low table like a coffee table if I can). You don’t need to move the whisk across the bowl, just whisk at the widest part of the bowl until the foam covers the surface. (that is why you need a big bowl for so little tea, it has to accommodate the whisking action). Bring the whisk to the top of the foam and whisk more slowly to break up the larger bubbles. If you have a good head of foam, it will form a hill as you pull the whisk out of the tea bowl. Now you can enjoy!
Matcha, tea bowls and tea sets for making matcha are now available at www.SweetPersimmon.com.
Sensei said, “complete this moment before moving on to the next,” What did she mean when she said that? How long is a moment, and how do you know when it is complete?
I often live in my head rather than in the world. By that, I mean that I have an active imagination and I am always thinking about what comes next and what will happen and what will I do if this or that happens. While I am day dreaming or imagining disaster or concocting fantasies in my head or planning out my next move, I miss what is actually going on around me. I am famous for saying to other people, “what just happened?” or “what did I miss?” My husband gets exasperated with me. “Don’t you know? You were here, where did you go?”
For me the challenge is to stay in the world rather than retreat into my head. When they tell me to stay present, I am most often staying future. Some people have trouble because they are staying past and always thinking regrets or would have, should have or could have.
So I think completing this moment is staying in the world, to simply notice where I am and what is going on around me rather than what is going inside my head and imagining or fantasizing what I think is going on or want to go on or should be going on. Tea study helps me stay out of my head because all I have to worry about is what I am doing right now. It focuses me on what my body and hands are doing.
Sensei also said, “Tea practice gets us out of our heads and into our bodies so that we can touch our souls.”
I tried grinding my own matcha last week. I used some Gyokuro, which is leaf tea grown and processed like matcha, only it is not ground up. I didn’t have a tea grinding stone. I used a mortar and pestle because I thought it would grind it to a fine powder.
I remembered from my tea lectures that often it fell to the daughter of the house to grind the tea because the tea grinding stones are heavy and young girls, unlike young boys don’t try to muscle the stones to grind the tea faster. Something about the heat from the friction of the stones changes the flavor of the tea. So I tried to grind the tea slowly and make good matcha.
Whew! Grinding tea is hard work. After about an hour, I had some broken up tea flakes, but nothing that resembled the fine powder of matcha. We’re talking baby powder fineness here, and I was still a long way from that. I began to press harder on the pestle, but then remembered the friction and heat.
Two and a half hours later I had ground enough tea for one hearty bowl of matcha. I thought it was fine enough to whisk into a good bowl of tea.
And how was the taste? It was terrible. Completely awful. Though it whisked up to a fine froth, the taste left much to be desired. Besides being the most bitter matcha I ever tasted, the mouth feel of this tea was like a big bite of compost. It grassy and chewy and not in a good way. Apparently it was not ground fine enough and perhaps the gyokuro was not the highest quality. I drank the whole bowl, but I don’t think I’ll be grinding tea again. Now I know why good matcha costs so much.
