Tea ceremony at Urakuen in Inuyama

こんにちは

After tenshin at the hotel, we moved to Urakuen for matcha (thin tea). Urakuen has a few tea houses surrounded by gardens with a lot of greens. As we went on the pass, the historical tea houses appeared from the trees. I was excited having tea in this nice place with a quiet and peaceful atmosphere.




Each ceremony was held with about 30-40 guests. I believe this Inuyama tea ceremony is popular. Many people were there, so we waited our turn for quite a while, maybe a half-hour in a waiting room and we moved to another waiting room and waited for another half-hour. Our turn came and we were led to the tea room. It was kind of a formal occasion, so I was not able to take photos of the ceremony. Sorry.　As I waited my tea, I looked around the room. The walls and pillars were old and tasteful, and the decorations on tokonoma were pleasing to the eye. My matcha came in a colorful bowl. I think it was a kyo ware. Various bowls used at the ceremony. The lady next me was having tea with a black raku bowl. The matcha and confectionary were pretty good. Not only the great taste of tea and sweets, but also I was happy with all the experiences regarding the ceremony. I thought it was an excellent experience relishing tea on tatami in the rustic tea room with the beautiful environment at New Year’s. I also though this is a good start of New Year!! And it will be a wonderful year for meヽ(^。^)ノ

This is our master and me in front of the tea house.


Some photos at Urakuen

Tenshin, light meal at tea ceremony

On the second of Jan, I went to Inuyama with Hiro and our tea master to join a tea ceremony. Inuyama is our nearby city in Aichi prefecture. The tea ceremony is held at Meitetsu-Inuyama Hotel and Urakuen which is next to the hotel. At the tea ceremony, tenshin (light meal for tea ceremony) was served at the hotel and matcha was at a tea room in Urakuen. We went to the hotel first. The tenshin was served in a big hall with tables, not in a Japanese tatami room. Eventhough people were wearing nice outfit (Some of them were wearing kimono), the tenshin ceremony seemed casual. You were seated on a first-come-first served basis. Formal manners for tea ceremony were not required so much, so we just enjoyed the meal (^-^)

This is the tenshin served there. It’s New Year, so the dishes were osech-style. Osechi is Japanese special meal for New Year. Sacred sake was also served, which is in the red vessel on the near side.



Zoni was served in a bowl. Zoni is a soup with rice cakes and vegetables. It is also a popular meal for New Year. Zoni has different tastes and ingredients from region to region. Zoni isn’t my favorite meal but the zoni served here was pretty good. I loved the tasty flavor of the soup.

The tea served with tenshin was hojicha ヽ(^。^)ノ

Sweets from a confectionary shop and supermarket

I went to Azumaken, my favorite confectionary shop in my town on the New Year’s Eve. There are several confectionary shops in the town, and I think Azumaken is the best. They might be a little expensive but their sweets look beautiful.

These are the sweets we bought at Azumaken. They were around 200yen each.



I also found some confectionary at a supermarket. They were about 100yen each. I don’t usually find this type of confections at the supermarket, but I guess it’s New Year so there are some demands. I bought them to compare how different from sweets at Azumaken.


The sweets from Azumaken were about double in the price, and looked sophisticated. The sweets from the supermarket were harsh in the color and crude in the design. Supermarket ones were not bad. I love these reasonable sweets, but they pale when compared to expensive sweets, as a matter of course.

There was a same design of sweets at both Azumaken and the supermarket. It was a plum-blossom-shaped confection. Do you see the difference?

They are made of sweet bean paste, and nothing taste like plum, though.


These are confectionary from Azumaken. They are images of crane and tortoise. Crane and tortoise are lucky animals in Japan.




These are also confectionary from Azumaken. The pink one on the left is an image of the rising sun with a design of big wave on it. I like the pretty color of hte sun and the great composition of the wave. I think the wave looks like The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Great_Wave_off_Kanagawa2.jpg).




We had osechi, a special meal in the morning of New Year Day. After osechi we enjoyed the confections with matcha.

Kokaen, tea shop in my town

Happy New Year, everyone! I’m back from the winter holidays (^-^). I had a lot of events on the holidays. I’ll write about them on this blog.


In our family tradition, we have matcha on New Year's Day. So, we usually buy matcha and confectionary on New Year’s Eve. I went to Kokaen in my town. It’s a small tea shop and run by an elderly lady. Kokaen is not a fancy store. It is cramped and cluttered, but sells good quality matcha, and they are much reasonable than urban tea shops. We got 2000yen/20g matcha, which our master usually buys for our tea lesson. It is expensive, but really good. It has good aroma, rich umami and very mild bitterness. We love the grade of matcha.

The matcha is grinded at the store. The lady is checking the mills.

Gyokuro prepared with 80degC water

Yesterday, I prepared gyokuro like sencha brewing. But it didn’t have much bitterness and it was too mellow. I didn’t like it very much. So I tried it again with higher temperature of water and shorter brewing time.

** Today’s condition **
Tea: Gyokuro 2g
Water: 80degC, 50ml
Brewing time: 90sec



Today’s tea got better. It had cross between good umami and bitterness and tasted like kabusecha (^-^) I think the higher temperature of water worked fine. I think it’s fun to explore tea.

My online-shop, Everyone’s Tea is closing between Dec.29 to Jan.5 for the winter holidays. Shipping for orders and replies to any inquiries during this period will be delayed until Jan. 6. We are sorry for any inconvenience. I’ll also take a break from posting new blog during the period. Thank you for reading my blog, see you in the next year! Have a great new year!!

Gyokuro prepared like sencha

When I went to Uji, Kyoto, I bought a package of sencha, called Soencha. Now I’m having that tea at home. It has very rich umami. I think it is more like kabusecha rather than sencha. To bring out its rich and savory flavor, I brew the tea with plenty of leaves. I really like Soencha, and now I’m pretty into it.

I am curious if I can brew the similar taste of tea with other leaves as well. Gyokuro has rich umami so I wondered if gyokuro will taste like Soench by preparing it with plenty of 70degC water. I mean I’m preparing gyokuro by sencha-brewing method.

*** Condition ***
Tea: gyokuro 7g
Water: 70degC, 200ml
Brewing time: 2 min



This is the tea I brewed. It was not terrible but not good. This is not high-grade gyokuro, so I found a little unpleasant taste in the brewed tea. It had rich umami but it didn’t have a good bitterness. Without the bitterness, the tea got too mellow. My experiment was a failure (^_^;) I want to try it again with higher temperature of water to bring out more bitterness.

Sweet dumplings

Last night, I went to a supermarket for shipping for Christmas dinner. It was pretty crowded with customers. I got some cheese and vestibules for cheese fondue, and a whole chicken. I also find reasonable sweets there. They were 98yen per package, which had 5 little pieces of sweet dumplings. I got two different packages. I already had two of each, so in the picture only three pieces left (^_^;)








These dumplings were the sweets to go with my today’s tea. The darker one has a white chewy dumpling covered with sweet bean paste. The white one is made of the white chewy stuff, and has sweet bean paste in it. Even though they are very reasonable, they give me a great pleasure for my tea time. I love those reasonable sweets (^-^) Wish you a Marry Christmas!

The last drops - sencha -

This is a continuation from the past blog. >>> “The last drops of tea from a teapot.”
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Summary;
Majority of books tell to pour all tea until the last drops of it from teapot into a cup. Because the last drops have the richest flavor. There is an opposing theory that you may pour or not pour the last drops to adjust the taste of your tea. I wondered how the last drops taste like.
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I actually brewed tea and tasted the last drops. Today, I used futsu-sencha (regular steamed). The last drops sure had a strong flavor. They were bitter but I also found flavorful umami behind the sharp bitterness. The after taste continued with the bitterness and a savory green tea aroma came through my nose. I thought they were too bitter to taste but not unpleasant.


I also compared the teas with the last drops and without the last drops.
A: Tea with the last drops
B: Tea without the last drops
C: The last drops only

** Conditions **
Tea: Futsu-sencha 2g
Water: 70ml, 70degC
Brewing time: 2mins

The brewed tea color was slightly brighter with Tea B and darker with A. With this tea and the conditions, A had nice taste with good body. B was light and weak and it was too mild for me. I have already explained about C earlier. Maybe throwing away the last drops doesn’t work for correctly-prepared sencha, and it will work when tea is accidently brewed strongly.

The last drops of tea from a teapot

Majority of books tell to pour all tea until the last drops of it from a teapot into a cup. There are two reasons for it. One is that the last drops have the richest flavor of the tea; they are sometimes called the golden drops, so that you don’t want to waste them. The other reason is that the reaming water in the teapot will make the leaves continue infusing, and will make the tea taste bad in the second brewing. That’s why most books recommend pouring all the tea in the teapot.

The other day I found an article which tells you that you can adjust the taste of your tea by pouring or not pouring the last drops from the teapot. With the last drops, the tea will be rich and profound. Without the last drops, the tea will get lighter and milder in taste. I thought it makes sense. I am naturally using this method. Whenever I pour tea into cups and I find that the tea looks well-brewed and strong, I naturally throw away the last drops. (Or I sometimes pour the last drops and add hot water to weaken it.) Anyway, I wonder how the last drops taste. Do they have condescended umami? Strong bitterness? Well-branced flavor? Have you tasted just the last drops of tea? I thought I would try them. I will report the result on the next post.

Sweet pick at tea ceremony

It is a little cold cloudy day, but the sun comes and goes from breaks through a cloud sometimes. By getting the comfortable sunlight, my dining room is not so cold. I enjoyed my peaceful tea time with a confectionary and matcha in the room. The confectionary I had today were the leftover sweets from yesterday’s tea lesson. Our master is very generous and sometimes gives us the leftover sweets.


Yesterday’s confection was a little unique. It was made of a dried persimmon and has a white chewy sweetened dumpling in it. I love dried persimmons so I liked this confection. We usually use a sweet pick to have a confection at a tea ceremony. This is what I personally use.

But the dried persimmon is a little chewy as well and it was too difficult to eat it with the pick. You can bite it directly in this case. The sweets served at many tea ceremonies are usually easy to have it with the pick. This persimmon confection is not so suitable for tea ceremonies, our master said. But she also told us if you ever had a confection that is difficult to consume with the use of a pick, you may have it with your hands for too fragile ones or for biting it directly with very chewy ones.

Last night we had the last tea lesson of this year. For next year’s first event, we are planning to join a tea ceremony which will be held in a neighborhood city. I’m so much looking forward to it!

How various sizes of tea strainer mesh affects the taste of fukamushi-sencha

I did a test to find out how the mesh fineness affects the taste of futsu-sencha (regular steamed) on the previous blog. Today, I’ll do the same test with fukamushi-sencha (deep steamed).

Fukamushi-sencha leaves are usually finer than futsu-sencha so I assume the fineness of the mesh will have more impact on the taste. This is the fukamushi-sencha I used today which has pretty fine pieces.

Here are three teapots with different strainers.

Teapot A, Mounted stainless strainer (Finer than ceramic strainers)
Teapot B, Fine-mesh ceramic strainer
Teapot C, Regular-mesh ceramic strainer



*** Conditions ***
Tea: fukamushi-sencha, 2grams
Water: 70ml, 70degC
Brewing time: 30secnds


Based on the result, I think A and B are good for fukamushi-sencha.

I found fine grains of leaves on the bottom of A and slightly larger grains in B. I could not tell how big the pieces are in C because it was too murky. After leaving them a couple of minutes, I could check the grains and pieces of leaves more clearly at the bottom. C had more grains of leaves than A and B. It is not obvious in this photo but there are some larger pieces with C.

　　

I’ve tasted them. These are brewed with the same tea and condition so basically they all have similar flavors. However, as you see the difference in their color, the tastes were a little different among the three. B had the lightest flavor and C had a profound flavor and a little bitter. I don’t know why B was lighter than A. Could it be because of the material of the strainer and teapot? I couldn’t say which strainer is good or bad for the taste. It depends on your preference. But I personally prefer A and B. The grains on the bottom make the last sip muddy and bitter. I’m not so comfortable sipping a muddy and bitter sencha. A and B had less grains than C. To conclude, stainless or fine-mesh ceramic strainers are better for fukamushi-sencha.


I also tested the agitate-brewing method at the second brewing. Before pouring, I moved each teapot in a circular motion. Here are what I got from the brewing.

　　　

They are all too murky and I could not tell the size of the floating pieces. I left them for a couple minutes but they were still murky.



I took a sip of each tea. They were all too rough in texture and too bitter even with the finest stainless strainer. I don’t recommend moving or shaking a teapot when you prepare fukamushi-sencha.


If you want to know about futsu and fukamushi-snecha, please check out my three previous posts.
1.　http://everyonestea.blogspot.com/2009/12/regular-sencha-vs-long-steamed-sencha-1.html
2. http://everyonestea.blogspot.com/2009/12/regular-sencha-vs-long-deep-steamed.html
3. http://everyonestea.blogspot.com/2009/12/regular-sencha-vs-long-deep-steamed_10.html

Tea scoop

At this week’s tea lesson, our master showed us a part of her tea scoop collection. Tea scoop is a utensil to scoop and move matcha from a tea container to a teabowl at a tea ceremony. The common tea scoop is made of bamboo with a knot at the middle. We only used the common type of tea scoops during the lesson which is composed of just two scoops from the right. The three from the left are higher-grade tea scoops which are used at some certain tea ceremonies. These tea scoops without a knot are called shin type. What our master has are made of wood, turtle shell or ivory.