International Women’s Day Tea using nothing but dogu made by female artists. We included an orchid natsume to represent intersex women and we used a chawan by Crown Princess Yi Bangja, who founded Korea’s first schools for the disabled. The hanaire is from the Ostara Women’s Collective in Oslo.
Just some gorgeous sunsets over Tucson this week.
Christmas chanoyu with delicious matcha from my cousin’s tea shop in Oslo, Norway. “Gamle Ørn” translates to “old eagle” and has layered meaning in Norwegian culture. Sweets were chestnut chakin shibori and roasted persimmon. Merry Christmas! #chanoyu #teaceremony #matcha
I was feeling utterly overwhelmed the other day, stranded for a couple of days at a cabin in the North Carolina mountains after a series of crazy events. I took a walk, and the forest reminded me of the inevitability of change, and the mountain vistas reminded me of how tiny that moment really was.
Tea lessons in an ancient mountain forest above the Tucson desert was a stroke of fortune in this week of chaos. How healing to have tea beneath pines that have lived far longer than our country has even existed. Our sweets plate was a piece of bark shed from a centuries-old tree. #chanoyu #tea
Chabako in Seattle by Seward Park’s giant torii gate with my friends Ophi and Tali. What a beautiful day! I had also planned a memorial tea at a former Japanese internment camp in Canada but had a fairly serious injury. (Thankfully I’m healing up and won’t need surgery.) #teaceremony #chanoyu #tea
🇺🇸🇨🇳🇮🇶🇺🇦🇯🇵🇲🇽🇩🇰
Sen Sōshitsu XV
19 April 1923 – 14 August 2025
Memorial tea this morning by my teacher, Kimon Sōko
That’s so great! Happy anniversary!
Thanks! This is an unusual but classic shape called tokin-gata. In English it’s usually called a “hood shaped” chashaku. It was favored by one of the Urasenke iemoto, but I don’t remember which one. 😊
#chanoyu for a friend recovering from surgery. Sweets plate is an antique shigaraki saggar. Sweets were yokan made from dried tiger figs and powdered fig leaves from my garden. Shang Dynasty Gu hanaire. Chashaku is “Empty Shell:”
Cicada’s empty shell —
It sang itself
Utterly away
(Bashō)
Also, “According to data from the Trade Statistics of Japan Ministry of Finance, 78% of all powdered green tea exported from Japan -- which includes matcha powder -- went to the U.S. in 2024.” (ABC News)
Here in Tucson, there’s a teahouse chain using Ippodo Sayaka no Mukashi for “ceremony grade lattes!” It’s koicha, and they’re just using it like it’s nothing! Meanwhile my friends in Japan were only allowed to buy a single can each time they went to the store. It’s very frustrating.
It’s a problem for us here in the USA. Ippodo, Koyamaen, Maruyasu…all of the tea companies that we used to get our matcha from for Chanoyu have been sold out since fall and have said their prices will more than double once matcha is available again, and it will be limited to one can per order
How can there be “ceremony grade” houjicha? Houjicha wasn’t invented until the 1920s and wasn’t powdered for commercial purposes until recently. The only houjicha ceremony is to offer it to dead ancestors — certainly not to put it in lattes. So am I missing something?
That okashi is beautiful, and I’ve never seen the print of the watermelon boats! Amazing. Thank you for sharing this!
Celestial tea. Scroll says, “When I scoop water in my hands: the moon.”
Chashaku is named “Magnitude” after the Kevin Valentine haiku:
Canopy of Stars,
The magnitude
Of not knowing
Mizusashi by Kinoto Kuniko. Moon chawan by Alexis Ellis. Poured glass sweets plate.
#chanoyu #teaceremony #haiku
Wow! That’s absolutely incredible. What a wonderful space!
Oh, I hope you get resolution quickly! I’m so sorry. I ended up getting a misonodana in order to do tea for several of my friends who need the extra accessibility. It’s been such a joy to be able to do tea for people who previously couldn’t be guests.
That’s exactly what happened to me with the bowl I used in my tea last weekend! I wanted it so badly, and when I went back to look at it I saw that it had been sold. Sure enough, it ended up being my birthday gift. I hope he got it for you — it’s spectacular!
How sweet! It looks like a tiny quill in an even tinier inkwell. 😊
Paku Paku An is an incredible gallery. The glass artist behind Cool is Tea is absolutely phenomenal. Do you think you’re going to get the one you’re crazy for?
Thank you!
Wow, that is just lovely. It looks like a pleasure to hold as well. There’s a big wood-firing community here in Tucson, and I’ve seen hundreds of their pieces, but I’ve never seen one with a glaze that lustrous. Amazing!
What a wonderful space! During the pandemic I joined one of the Portland study groups along with my tea friend, Arlene Watkins, who moved here from there. It was wonderful to share tea over Zoom for that strange, strange period of time. I wonder if we were ever on the same calls.
Inspired by PakuPakuAn’s “Cool is Tea,” which interrogated the ways we observe ritual during times of radical change, I put together a toriawase of complementary opposites. Saguaro fruit nerikiri on Alaskan slate, Momoyama-era Shigaraki potsherds suspended in a glass chawan by Oshita Kunihiro.
Tanabata candle-lit tea — with a black light and phosphorescent teaware by Kinoto Kuniko and Zeinab Manesh! Afterward we attached our wishes on prayer bells and hung them in the trees in our front yard. #teaceremony #tanabata #chanoyu
20th anniversary of Brokeback Mountain with writer/producer, Diana Osanna. The young woman next to me had never seen it, because she was a baby when it came out. She couldn’t believe people had ever been killed for being gay. It reminds me that those of us who were out in the 90s were very brave.
My sensei (Kimon Sōko) came over and made tea for my birthday, mixing traditional, modern, Japanese, and Sonoran. It was a beautiful way to start a new year.
#nokings tea, with loads of symbols. Scroll: “Harmonizing Ourselves Comes First.”
Hanaire from the Nobel Peace Plaza in Oslo. Flower is yerba mansa, an indigenous plant from my front yard, used for women’s medicine.
The rains of summer gather together.
How swift it is
Mogami River
-Basho
