How to wipe the tea bowl (video)

You rinse the tea bowl before and after making matcha in a tea ceremony. There is a certain way of wiping the wet tea bowl using a special linen cloth called chakin. 　The manner varies depending on school traditions. For instance, I have taught that you wipe the bowl with three and half strokes, but some books say three strokes.

Wiping the bowl is a little complicated. You don’t have to be perfect if it is difficult for you. The idea that we clean the bowl before making tea is one of the gestures to show your respect to the guests. The tea bowl is already cleaned in the preparation room before the ceremony begins. However, you dare to clean it in front of the guests once again. I think that it represents the whole concept of the tea that you’re serving. It is something special and purified with your hospitality. As far as, you politely clean the bowl from the heart, it will be fine. Don’t worry the details too much. Good luck with your tea gathering and enjoy!!

I’m sorry if you have difficulty checking the details on this video because of the bad camera angle. My arm seems to gets in the way of my demonstration.

Please refer the previous post for the proper way of folding chakin.

How to fold chakin (video)

A special linen cloth is used to wipe the tea bowl in a tea ceremony. It is called chakin which is about 30*15cm (12*6in) large. Before the ceremony begins in the preparation room, you nicely fold a damped chakin. Then it is ready to be taken into the tea room with other utensils.

I have introduced how to prepare matcha in the past entry. One of the readers told me that he wants to know how to wipe the tea bowl properly. The manner depends on school traditions. On this video, I’ll introduce the way that I learned at my tea school. I’ll show you how to fold chakin today, and how to wipe the bowl in the next entry.






Chakin linen cloth is available on our shop. Click this picture to jump to the shop.

Trying Pu-erh tea

I rarely drink Chinese tea, but the other day, I got pu-erh tea from a friend of mine.    I don’t have any Chinese tea utensils and don’t know the proper preparation.  I just learned some tips from him.

The major differences from Japanese preparation that I noticed are as follows:

• Consuming plenty of tea leaf
• Rinsing the leaves
• High temperature water
• Shorter brewing time
• Multiple brewing

Knowing these preparations surprised me that pu-erh leaves can be brewed more than ten times if it is in good quality or condition.

When I tried to prepare for the first try, it was a failure because the tea got too strong.  The second try went pretty well, tea was very smooth with an elegant floral aroma. It had much rich fragrant than Japanese teas which is like a smell of flowers and a note like cinnamon.  When I smelled the remaining scent in the cup after drinking, I smelled sweet caramel aroma.  The tea doesn’t have greenish bitterness like Japanese sencha has.  The bitterness of pu-erh is milder with a soil like smell. I liked this tea and enjoy finding the differences from Japanese teas. 

I took the tea set to my desk and I’m writing this article.  Now, I’m enjoying the fifth brewing.  The flavor is slightly changing but still has the good aroma.  I’m impressed with it.  Chinese tea might be good to drink at office because you can prepare it the same tea over and over while you are working.  Chinese tea has charms that Japanese tea doesn’t have.  (The opposite is equally true.)  Again, the Chinese tea aroma is excellent!  It is fun to explore tea from different country.  You can find a new way of enjoying tea.  

Common Mistake on Bowing - How to bow in the tea room -

When Japanese people shake hands with westerners, we sometimes bow while shaking hands.  It might look comical to you, but I have probably done it myself before, hahaha.  I know that it looks funny but bowing is so natural for us and we naturally bow when greeting.  However, the opposite thing can happen to westerners.  When westerners bow in Japanese style, some of them stick out their heads forward.  It looks comical for us, too.  Why do you think it happens?

In the western greeting, you shake hands as you look straight at the eyes of the other person, which expresses integrity.  I think that this manner makes some westerners try to look at the other person even when they are bowing.  It makes their chin up and causes the sticking of their heads.

In Japanese greeting, we show our respect by removing our gaze from the other person.  Staring at someone directly is considered rude.  (There seem to be some exceptions, for bowing in some martial arts, we look at the opponent.)  I’ve never thought of the reasons behind the manner of bowing, but I’ve just learned it from a book that I’ve read. hehehe.   This idea makes sense to me also when comparing with the practice of bowing in the tea ceremony.  When we greet formally in a ceremony, we place a folding fan on the floor in front of us to create a temporal borderline with it.  It is the sign of condescension by not directly facing to the other person.  It supports aforementioned idea.

Not understanding these cultural backgrounds makes our greeting comical. 

This is what I have learned from my tea school and some books.  Bowing varies school to school and person to person, but this is how I do it.  I’m not sure if you want to know but I’ll share some detailed tips:

Move your hand smoothly by traveling along your lap and place them on the floor in front of your knees.

Retain a small space between both hands and make a triangle with your thumbs and index fingers.  Line up the four fingers, which looks beautiful.  Touch the floor without your palm making in contact to the floor, to make your hand look gentle.

Bend your hip and tilt your upper body with a straight back.  Try not to curl your back.

Look at the floor a little far from you, with your chin down

When raising your body back, do not push up with your arms, use your back.

Take back your hand smoothly with the backward motion

Now, you are one of the people who can bow beautifully in the tea room.

If I have a chance to shake hands, I’ll try to look at the other person’s eyes and try not to bow at the same time.  If you have a chance to do Japanese bowing, try to look at the floor!

I Bow This Way, You Bow That Way

We bow even in Japanese martial arts, judo, karate or kendo.  I started taking aikido (a kind of martial arts) lesson last year.  I bow so many times in the class.  I’ve realized that there is a slight difference in the way of bowing between martial arts and sado.

At sado, you sit on your legs and place your hands on the floor in front of your knees and tilt your upper body from your hip.  Even in sado, every school has a different style of bowing.  I have seen some people placing their fists at the side of their knees when they bow.  You can’t simply say what the correct way is.  In the aikdo class or in some books, people put out their hands one after another while at my tea school, we place both hands at the same time.  Why are they different?  However, I’ve realized that my aiki teacher and some of the students are not following the rule.  They put out both hands at once like the sado style.  The way of bowing really varies.

Sado

Martial arts

I asked my aikido teacher if there is a correct way of bowing in aiki.  He explained the reason of his way of bowing.  In martial arts, people usually place their left hand first and then right hand a moment after.  It allows your right hand free until the last moment, which is a preparation for an unanticipated attack.  You can grab your sword, defend or attack back with the right hand.  Wow, I didn’t know that the manner of hands has such meaning.  This is my teacher’s opinion.  We just practice kata (forms) and aikido is not a martial art for fighting.  So, he thinks that he doesn’t need to do the one-by-one hand bowing at aiki.  The explanation really got me.  Since then, I follow my teacher’s way in the aiki class.

Now it also clearly makes sense how we bow in sado.  There is no fighting in the tea room, so you can put out your both hands at the same time in peace, unless someone attacks you with hot tea or throws a tea cup at you. hahaha.

Aikido on Wikipedia >>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aikido

Enhancing your tea by roasting - How to roast hojicha -

“The way to make you happy in 5 minutes”  On a TV program on NHK, they introduced how to make hojicha with such catch phrase.  Hojicha is tea made by roasting sencha or kukicha.  You can buy it from tea shops but you can actually make one at home by roasting your sencha.  I tried what I’ve learned from the TV program.  Did I get happy?  Please see what happened.

What you need:

Iron frying pan  (If you don’t have one, you can use a stainless pot.)

Green tea leaf: 15g  (Casual grade sencha 400yen/100g will be fine)

Tips:

First, slowly at low heat

For the finish, rapidly at high heat

1. Pre-heat frying pan for 30 seconds at high heat

2. Place the pan on a damp cloth for 2 seconds to cool it down a little bit

This makes the pan even in temperature.  About 100gC/212F is the ideal temperature.

3. Place the green tea leaves by spreading into the pan

By placing tea into the pot, colorful green-tea aroma rises

4. Put the lid on and leave it for 2 and half minutes.

No fire, residual heat will do.

5. Open the lid

The leaves are still green.  I could smell rich fragrance already.  It has a green grass note and there seem to be some other aromas behind it.  I wanted to check them if I can find the various scent like mint, rock salt, flower, chocolate or orange.  But I didn’t have such time because I had to proceed to the next step before it will be over cooked.

6. Roast the leaves at high heat for 1 minute while stirring them.

I noticed that the odor was rapidly and continuously changing from one to another since I started roasting.  The green note became a roasted nutty aroma and then sweet smell. In 20 seconds, it already started smoking.  I guess that my stove was too strong.  I didn’t know what to do.  So, I just turned down the heat to medium and kept this processes for one minute.

7. When smoke starts to rise, put off the fire.

Keep roasting it with the remaining heat for another minute.

At this point, the odor was definitely different from the beginning.  I can acutely find the smoky aromas like cigar and cinnamon which were mentioned on the TV program.

Here is the pictures for before (top) and after (below) smoking.

Some leaves have a nice brownish color, but some small pieces are blackish.  I guess the heat was too strong on the 6^th step, so small pieces got over cooked and  burned.  Besides that, it went pretty well.    I could not find all the smell that was mentioned on TV, but I experienced the fresh greenish fragrance changing into various roasted odor like nuts (hazelnuts??) and chocolate like sweet ones.  In the end smoky odor was added which is like cigar and cinnamon.  I had the nice woody smell not only in the kitchen but also in the living room and other rooms.  I asked myself if I’m happy now.  I was not sure if I was happy but I definitely felt good.  I loved the aroma of hojicha and was satisfied with the result.  The idea on the TV, “Aroma of hojicha makes you happy” or “The way to make you happy in 5 minutes” may not be totally wrong. 

There was another advantage!  I used old sencha for making this hojicha, which I didn’t like and didn’t consume much.  It has been kept for a long time at home.  But once it was turned into hojicha, it re-lived.  I prepared the hojicha and tasted it.  
Hojicha: 1.5grams

Boiling water: 80ml (2.8oz)

Brewing time: 1 minute

It was quite good!!  I couldn’t believe that it was my least favorite tea.  It is very smooth with a caramelic sweet flavor which is like a mild black tea without bitterness.  Every time I move the cup, the alluring earthy aroma was pervaded and pleased me.  After drinking, the faint aroma remained around me and my senses were surrounded with the delight for a while.  

Give it a try with your old senecha!  Now as I’m writing this article, I’m drinking hojicha with sugar and milk.  Now, I’m happy!

Chemistry of hojicha aroma

TV can’t deliver the smell to the viewers.  A TV program on NHK was trying to explore the aroma of hojicha, roasted green tea.  They had a sommelier that is an expert on distinguishing flavors and describing them with words.  That’s a smart idea!  For producing hojicha, the green tea was roasted four times.  He smelled the tea after each process, and described the odor that he found in the tea by comparing it to some other materials.

1^st smelling: green grass, lime

2^nd smelling: rock salt, salty water

3^rd semlling: roasted hazelnut, chocolate,

4^th smelling: Sweet vanilla beans, coffee, cigar,

I sincerely admire the ability of the sommelier.  He also compared the aroma as small white flower and big yellow flower.  I can’t even imagine the difference of them, hahaha.  I wish that I had the fine sense of smell and the expressive vocabulary.  The aroma of hojicha is created with various flavors.  It seems complicated and profound.

At the early roasting steps, the sommelier found the aromas like the items shown on the left side of this picture, and for the 4th smelling, he finally found the aroma like the items on the right side.

Top column from left to right: green grass, small white flower, hazelnut, big yellow flower/ coffee, soy sauce, maturing aroma of cask,

Bottom column from left: lime, mint, rock salt, chocolate, orange/ vanilla beans, cigar, cinnamon

Tea has more than 300 kinds of the smell substances in it.  However, most of them are attached to sugar in the leaf and they are sealed.  By slowly roasting green tea in the first three steps, those aromas will separate from the sugar and get freed.  In the final step with the strongest roast process, the sugar will merge with amino acids and create the roasted aroma, which is called the amino-carbonyl reaction.  The odor of Hojicha consists of a combination of the latent aromas of tea and the roasted aroma that is created by heating.  Tea potentially has the hidden aromas but you can’t truly enjoy them with green tea (sencha).

In the TV program, they didn’t tell which substance of the hojicha aromas has the ability to get people relaxed.  Now, I wonder if Chinese or black teas have the same effects, which usually have richer aromas than the Japanese green teas.  Anyway, it is for sure that hojicha has a great efficacy to make people relax and happy with its alluring fragrance.  In the feature post, I’ll introduce how to roast hojicha.

The Tea that Makes You Happy without Drinking

“I’m pleased.”, “I feel so good.” or “I want to try it at home.”  On a TV program on NHK, the interviewees were answering such when they tried hojicha, a roasted green tea.  It seems that hojicha has an ability to make people happy.  Today, I want to talk about what I learned from the TV program.  

It is known that there is a substance in green tea to make you relax which is called theanine, one kind of amino acid which is umami flavor.  If you check the alpha wave in your brain, you can tell that you will get relaxed when you drink green tea.  Green tea in a broad sense can sometimes include hojicha in its category.  But in the TV program, they meant green tea in a limited sense as sencha, a most common green tea.  Hojicha is the tea produced by roasting green tea.

Left: before drinking tea,  Right: after drinking tea

The red part at the right bottom in the image represents the activity of alpha wave.

Alpha wave in the brain indicates relaxation.

The red part increased after drinking green tea.

How does it happen with hojicha?  Surprisingly, hojicha has only 1/100 of the theanine that green tea has.  Theanin (umami), catechin (bitterness) and caffeine decrease when producing hojicha out of green tea.   However, you can see as much alpha-wave increase with hojicha as the one with green tea.  That means that hojicha has an equivalent relaxing effect that green tea has even if theanin is at a much lower level.  It is a quite interesting fact.

Left: before drinking hojicha,  Right: after drinking hojicha

They had a test, in which they held a hojicha tasting in public.  In the beginning, they could not get many people to try the tea, but once they turned on a secret device, people started gathering and made a crowd at the site.  The device is a hojicha-aroma diffuser.  The odor has some kind of positive effect that attracts people.

They had another alpha test with using only hojicha aroma that showed a similar result as with drinking hojicha.  Hojicha can provide relaxation even without drinking it.  Just the aroma from roasting green tea can bring you happiness.

People living in other countries may not be familiar with the smell of hojicha.  Can you imagine the odor?  For Japanese, most of us know the aroma.  Many tea shops have a tea roaster and making hojicha while producing an inviting smell.  In a shopping mall, you can tell there is a tea shop by the odor from a distance.  I’ll talk about the fragrance of hojicha on the next post.

Greeting between the host and guests

The host and guests greet each other by bowing silently at the chumon gate in the garden and after getting into the tea room they finally exchange words and courtesies.  Today, I would like to talk about a philosophical aspect of Chanoyu.  Why don't you greet with words for the first time you meet?  I guess that there are not many tea people who can answer this question.

When you as the guests get in the tea room, the host won’t be in the room yet.  After entering the room, you go to and look at the hanging scroll, flower and utensils and then you take a seat.  The host would appear when all the guests have been seated.  There is another interesting rule at this point.  The host opens the door and tries to greet from outside of the room.  Then you say “Please come in”.  The host will come in and have the greeting in the room.  Why do you need to give the host permission to come in?  You were invited and came to the host’s place.  The tea room is the host’s property.  Isn’t it a little weird?  It is said that the tea room is prepared for you, so the host tries to express his hospitality by practicing a humility and showing you respect.  I first thought how complicated it is!  But now, I can understand it if I think it as a relationship between the guest and the staff at a hotel, hahaha. 

Let’s get back to the first question.  Now in the room, the host and you as the guests make greetings with words while expressing the gratitude of invitation or participation.  Why have you kept silent on exchanging courtesies at the chumon gate?  I read one explanation which satisfies me.  The idea might be quite spiritual.  The tea room is considered as a cloistered sanctuary.  The host from the tea room or the inner-garden is a purified man.  On the other hand, you as the guests are people from the real world which is different from this sanctuary.  It could be considered that the people from the different worlds cannot talk nor have a common channel to communicate.  This is the explanation for the silent greeting.  After the greeting, you purify your hands and mouth and get in the room.  Now, the host and you are finally in the same world and can vocally communicate.

Tea people may enjoy this kind of spiritual concept.  When I think that way, the perspective of the tea world becomes much more firm and exciting.  This is just one idea.  If you know different explanation regarding the silent greeting, please let me know.

Before getting into the tea room

The tea ceremony doesn’t happen only in the tea room.  Before it starts, there are some things that you go through.  The pictures below are from the ceremony I attended the other day at Bosetsuan in Toki.

Yoritsuki is a waiting room where the guests get together before the ceremony begins.  At a formal ceremony, hot water in a tea cup is served in this room.  But at the ceremony where I attended, there was no hot water.  Instead, sweets were served in the yoritsuki.  The theme of the hanging scroll displayed in the room was associated with the rainy season.  

From yoritsuki (waiting room), the guests will be heading to koshikake, a waiting bench in the garden.  Usually there are traditional sandals for the garden prepared for guests. 

This is the koshikake, the place where the guests will wait until they see the host approaching to the gate called chumon.

The gate, chumon, separates the inner and the outer-garden.  When the host comes to the gate from the inner garden, the guests also go there from the outer garden where the waiting bench is located.  They meet and greet in silence by bowing across the chumon.

The guests will be heading to tsukubai, a water basin in the inner garden.  They purify their hands and mouth with water.  Then, they are ready to get into the tea room finally. 

These are the things you go through before the ceremony starts.  At a casual inexpensive ceremony, there might not be “greeting with the host at the gate” or “purifying your hands and mouth at tsukubai”.  The guests will wait in the waiting room and then just go straight to the tea room.  The ceremony in which I attended was inexpensive, it only costs 500yen, but I could experience these proper steps before getting into the tea room.  I don’t have much opportunity to practice those procedures even at my tea school.  So, I really appreciated and enjoyed this gathering at Bosetsuan.   

These procedures isolate or escape you from real life and take you to the world of tea.  Taking the time before a ceremony helps your mind to be ready.  Appreciating the scroll at the waiting room, silent greeting and purifying your hands may have important meanings.  I might not truly understand their essence yet, but I simply feel good waiting for the ceremony calmly.  

The tea room, Bosetsuan (Japanese) >>> http://www.city.toki.lg.jp/wcore/hp/page000000600/hpg000000577.htm

Water temperature for Matcha

I didn’t find the matcha that I prepared at home as tasty as the sample that I tried at a tea shop.  The sample at the shop had a very mellow but rich flavor with a mouth-filling umami, which is not bitter at all.  It was my favorite type of flavor that I'm looking forward to find in matcha.  When I tried it at home,  the rich umami was still there but the tea also became a bit of not so good taste.  It happens sometimes.  Even though, I get the same tea, it doesn’t taste good when I prepare it at home.  Have you ever experienced this kind of stuff?  You may think of various reasons, it could be the water, utensils or how you prepared it. 

When the lady at the shop was preparing the sample matcha, I noticed that she cooled down the hot water with a yuzamashi, ceramic bowl.  I got it!  Water temperature!  I didn’t give much attention to the water temperature when I prepared it at home.  Now, I got curious what would be the best temperature for this matcha. 

I prepared this tea with four different temperatures; 90, 80, 70 and 60C (194,176,158 and 140F).  What do you think about it?

From Left: 90, 80, 70 and 60C (194, 176, 158 and 140F)

I started to sip from the 90C tea.  I expected it to be bitter but it turned out quite great.  It has a rich flavor but it’s never bitter.  I love it.  I realized the excellent potential of this tea.  I tried tasting 80, 70 and 60 in turns.  They were getting milder as the temperature gets lower.  Each tea had a good sweetness.  The 90C tea has both sharpness and complexness in its flavor, while the 60C tea highlights its rounded umami mainly.  I found that the 90C tea was the tastiest at first impression and the 60C tea was too mild.  But then, when I tried them in the inverse order, from 60 to 90, I found a slight unpleasant taste in the 90C tea, and the 60 was the best.  The order has a big impact to my impression.   As I repeatedly tasted them, I got confused and I couldn’t tell which one I like the best.  Moreover, the teas seemed to get stronger and created more bitterness as the time passed.  

These four tea that I prepared today were relatively good when comparing with the tea that I had prepared previously.  The cause for the bad tea at home might not be the water temperature.  There might be some other reasons.  The difference between the previous preparation and this time is sifting.  I didn’t sift the matcha last time because it was a new tea that I just bought from the shop.  I found some lumps in the tea, so this time I sifted it before making the tea.  I guess that sifting has much to do with the taste of tea.

What I learned from today’s test are ..

-Sifting can be an important factor to serve a good tea. 

-High temperature water makes crisp tea with delightful complex flavors, and low temperature water makes mellow tea with abundant milky umami.

-I should consider the idle time after tea was served until the one to be drunk.  The tea gets stronger and bitterer during the period. 

Each tea was unique and attractive.  I can’t simply say what temperature is the best.   The temperature is only one of the many factors to serve a precious bowl of tea.