Tea Ceremony Equipments

Learning something about Japanese Tea Ceremony is very interesting. As I told you in my previous blog about tea ceremony, one of the principles is Tranquility. You have to do everything calmly, patiently and beautifully.

Even only to clean up the chawan (bowl), or to use o Hashi (chopstick) to take okashi (snack), you can not do it as what you want because there are special ways and steps to do. You really need to be patient.

Today I will Tell you about the equipment first. It`s my Tea Ceremony set for this week.

Sorry for the resulotion, I used my Cellphone to take this pic

Let start with the red one, look like handkerchief. It`s called Fukusa (帛紗). The fukusa is a silk cloth approximately 30 cm or a little less than 12 inches square, used for the ritual cleansing of the tea scoop and the tea caddy, and to handle hot kettle or pot lids.

Another red (or orange) is Natsume, the container of green tea powder. Actually, the container is called Chaki (茶器). There are two main types of Chaki: the ceramic caddies called cha-ire, and the lacquered or plain wood caddies called natsume. I used natsume in my class.I try to find out a better pic of natsume. Here it is. The pattern of the natsume itself is very beautiful.

The long bamboo is Chashaku (茶杓) or tea scoop generally about 18 cm in length. It is used to transfer the powdered tea from the tea container (chaki) to the tea bowl (chawan). A bowl in the left side is Chawan (茶碗), usually made from ceramic and has beautiful pattern. An unique shape bamboo in the right side is called Chasen (茶筅) or tea wishk. It`s used to mix the green tea powder and the water.

And the white thing in my first pic is Chakin (茶巾), a small rectangular white linen or hemp cloth mainly used to wipe the tea bowl. It`s just a napkin but you need to obey special rules using the chakin to clean up your bowl.

Difficult to spell? And difficult to remember? Yeah.. me too... hahaha...

special thanks : Google sensei (LoL), Wikipedia, and another sources