The Art of Green Tea

At the end of our walk from the farm to Fujino train station (I posted about it here) we met Tae, our beautiful Japanese tea ceremony master and the welcoming host for the tour. Tae lives in Tokyo, she travelled one and half hours to Fujino to perform the tea ceremony for us. I met Tae on my last visit to Japan. She and her husband are both interested in the Thai language. They both speak and write Thai very well.  With our mutual interest we seemed to click.

Tae stepped out of the train wearing one of her beautiful kimonos. What caught my eye was the hand woven obi. While we were waiting for our lift. I got a chance to have photo taken with Tae. 

Here is the close up photo of Tae's obi. The delightful motive was hand woven. She told us that she has it for a long long time. The colour and design could be anything in today's fashion! Love it, love it...

I got a chance to take a photo of the front view of Tae's obi. The motive is the same pattern as the back, but  smaller. It looks so elegant and delicate. 

I feel like I have seen this scene before. It was from a famous movie in a long gone era? I'm not sure now, but I certainly have seen it in another time, another place!  

The tea ceremony was set up on the third floor of the farm. We were all sitting around Tae observing, learning and photographing (we were allowed to photograph). The tea used in the ceremony was powdered green tea. 

We were offered to try making the tea as well. Tae was showing Cynthia the proper way to spoon the tea into a cup. Yes there are hundreds of steps in making tea. I was told by my Japanese friends that you need a life time to learn the Japanese tea ceremony.

Here is Lis making tea. Lis bloged about her experience of the tea ceremony too. You can read about that here.

At the end of the ceremony the group presented Tae with gifts we took from our countries. Tae enjoyed opening all the gifts. Preparing the gifts to take on the tour was a fun activity for everyone. All the gifts were well thought of. Some were hand made. 

I learned that Tae also loves taking photographs. Tae and Cynthia in front of the farm with the kura in the background. It was another memorable day, and our last day on the tour. Everyone left early the next morning. All good things came to an end...!

You might already know that I have two grown up children, Kitiya and Mark. Kitiya lives in Sydney and she is a little miss famous in her own right. This week she was interviewed by the Design Files Daily "5 Questions with Kitiya Palaskas". I'm a very proud mum! You already read about Mark and his Bike Babies adventure. They have now moved further up the East coast of Malaysia.

Till next time

Nat