Japanese Tea Ceremony

I took a tour for a traditional Japanese Tea Ceremony on September 16.  The tea ceremony is hosted by a real sensei.  She travels around the world showing the traditional ceremony.  She is quite famous on the island.


This was a shortened version as the real ceremony is about 3 hours.  This took about 40  minutes.  

We had to take our shoes off, then don wooden sandals and walk the stone path to the well here.  Then we had to wash left hand, then right hand, then wash out our mouths.

We had to crawl into this space while taking our sandals off without letting our bare feet touch the ground.

Each of us crawls into the space to symbolize that we are all equals in the tea room.  Each of us is lowered and made humble.

Our hostess.  As you can see, she is wearing a Catholic collar.  She is also a pastor.  So our "traditional" tea ceremony was   intertwined with religious scripture. 

Here daughter served the tea and sweets.

The first tea is called Matcha.  I didn't get a picture.  I didn't know about "blogging" then so I didn't know what to take pictures of.  Anyway, matcha is like a green tar.  It tastes terrible.  Each person is supposed to take 3 and 1/2 sips.  The "half" sip is supposed to symbolize a lack of greediness.  So instead of taking it all, you take half to let others know you are thinking of them.  Some didn't drink it because it tasted terrible.  But I did.

We had a sweet made of bean paste.  The texture took some getting used to, but it was good.  We ate this while the hostess prepared the tea.

Each person takes 3

This sweet came with the second tea.  The second tea was better than the first.  Bitter but drinkable.

At the end of the ceremony.  We had questions and answers.   We were taught the three bows that are done for standing and kneeling.

Our group.

This was a great trip.