Behind the Scenes of a Tea Ceremony is Where the Magic Happens
Washing, wiping, sweeping, scrubbing. Organizing, packing, unboxing, rearranging. It's spring cleaning time in the tea ceremony room.
Show me a tea practitioner who gracefully welcomes guests and calmly whisks a delicious bowl of tea, and I'll show you a person who has also worked incredibly hard behind the scenes to craft a beautiful experience. And it's often much more of a team effort than meets the eye.
In any tea ceremony, the guest’s first sip of tea is the pinnacle, of course. But something important happens just before that.
As a guest, you receive your bowl of tea, excuse yourself for drinking before the second guest, and thank the host for preparing it. Then, you silently lift the bowl in appreciation before drinking.
This quiet, thoughtful moment is kansha. It means gratitude – not only towards the host, but for all that led up to that moment to bring you that tea, from the farmers who grew it, to the makers who prepared it, to all the cleaning and preparation on the day of the event.
Over the years I've learned more and more about what really happens to create that special moment, and it truly does make the tea taste better, especially in this era of mass consumption when matcha has become a commodity. TikTok might make you think matcha is just a trendy beverage, but preparing tea is actually a labor of love.
We don't just study how to whisk matcha for that pinnacle moment. Thorough cleaning and proper organization are a sort of ritual of their own at the beginning and at the end of each tea ceremony event. Seasonally, we do the real deep cleans.
Just before the Golden Week holidays, a bunch of us got up early to help our teacher change from ro 炉 (sunken hearth) to furo 風炉 (brazier) at the tea house.
We cleaned everything from top to bottom – the tatami, sliding doors, every nook and cranny. We prepared charcoal for the new season ahead (smaller pieces are used for the furo), packed away the cooler-season utensils, and cleaned and arranged the items we'll use from now through October. We scoured the kitchen and the preparation areas, and vacuumed multiple times.
We’ll do another deep clean 6 months from now when we switch back to the ro.
Immersing yourself in wholeheartedly cleaning something, really putting care into it while letting yourself lose track of time, is an incredible way to refresh the mind. Every time I crouch down to wipe tatami mats with clean white towels, I remember the time I visited the legendary Zen temple Eiheiji in Fukui Prefecture, where I caught a glimpse of the monks doing the same thing in a huge hall after their morning prayers. As a form of devotion, cleaning works on the spirit as much as one's environment.
And there's the sense of newness, or reawakening, when we transition to the otemae お点前 (procedures) for the new season. In the tea room, all of your movements change depending on whether you're using the ro or furo – your footwork, sitting position, and handling of utensils. Many of the utensils themselves are different as well.
Switching from one to the other is switching to a different part of your brain.
And so, every half year, we start the new season by practicing the most basic tea ceremony procedure, usucha hirademae 薄茶平点前, before gradually working up to the advanced temae in the coming months.
Usucha is “thin tea,” a single bowl of tea for one person to drink. In the tradition of my school, Urasenke, usucha Is whisked to a creamy froth, while thick tea, koicha 濃茶, is a finer grade of matcha prepared with less water and kneaded into a creamy, deep green elixir that is commonly shared between guests.
Even the most advanced masters start the new season by going over the basics. For shoburo 初風炉, the first furo practice of the season, we all returned to our most elementary practice with the openness of a beginner’s mind and the joy of reuniting with an old friend.
It seems that any chance to infuse the familiar with gratitude can give it a surprising freshness.