This is an excerpt from the September/October issue of TEA Magazine
Japanese scholar Okakura Kakuzo once said, “Japan ennobled tea into a religion of estheticism — teaism.”
If tea drinking is a religion, its rites are performed through the Japanese Tea Ceremony where a frothy whipped tea known as matcha is served. Matcha is produced from tencha, a dark green tea that is grown in the shade to produce a sweeter taste.
The tencha is ground into a fine powder on hand-etched grinding stones of heavy granite. There are no artificial colors added to produce the tea’s brilliant green color after processing.
My friend Ako Yoshino teaches the Japanese Tea Ceremony in Japan. She has encouraged many on the path to enlightenment that one seeks when partaking of matcha at a tea house or in your home.
She writes that “through the ceremony, you can concentrate on each and every movement and act with utmost consideration to each other, which cultivates the peaceful and quiet mind.”
