Japanese people serve their tea with Wagashi. Those are incredibly pretty confections, which have become a part of the tea ceremony tradition and balance the bitter taste of the matcha tea with their sweet paste. Wagashi is made from various combinations of sweetened beans and rice floor – it’s a vast diversity from jellies and sponge cakes, to frozen ices and mocha. In order to indulge in this pleasure, you have to visit a proper tea house in Tokyo, where the ceremony is expertly conducted so that you may appreciate it with all your senses.
1. Yakumo Saryo
This venue is a restaurant and a tea room called Sabo, and its specialty is seclusion. It is in a silent area of the city, and it holds a garden of plum trees and a room with a view to it. It’s a place where tradition meets innovation. For breakfast, they serve “Asacha” – A traditional Japanese Breakfast set, featuring seasonal tea along with rice or porridge and some carefully selected dishes. In the Sabo, you can enjoy fresh Japanese sweets with many variations of tea and liquor. The house also offers a selection of traditional Japanese food souvenirs or gifts made in the region.
The Drosselmeyer Tea Infuser. Visit our Shop
2. Kosoan
It’s one of the places, which prove that Japan gets some things right: tea, garden landscaping and creating a calm place in the buzz of the city. All three are offered in Kosoan. It’s an immaculate, old tea-house, the ideal nook to escape the hustle and be served exquisite Matcha and Wagashi. When you find this place, you will have a selfish desire to keep it to yourself. As you open the door, you are immersed in a different world. The tea is rich and with an intense color and sweet fragrance, smooth and creamy a bit bitter. The Wagashi is a crystallized sugar bean treat, pleasantly cracking while you are cutting it with a wooden knife.
3. Sakurai
Twelve years passed from Shinya Sakurai’s life before he mastered the art of preparing tea. It’s a long time to dedicate to any activity. But when you drop in his shop in Aoyama, when he sits opposite you, conducting an exquisite tea ceremony, you begin to appreciate his hard work and patience. This store is created around the concept of tea as a form of medicine – as it was used by ancient people. Sakurai travels all around Japan to find the most tender tea leaves. You will begin to wish to have this superfood tea experience every single day.
4. Ichiriki Chaya
Chaya is the Japanese for “tea house.” Probably the most renowned Chaya of Kyoto, where a Geisha entertains the customers is Ichiriki. It is an elite and very exclusive house, renowned in entire Japan, The regular visitor won’t be able to see a lot through the curtain into the small garden because the house is really very private. To visit it requires influential friends and a lot of money. The Geishas are taught arrangement of flowers, dance and traditional music. They wear kimonos, obi, and accessories for millions of yen. Part of the novel “Memoirs of a Geisha” by Arthur Golden was set in the Ichiriki Chaya of Kyoto.
5. En Tea House
It’s a small tea house, made in the manner of the Japanese in the entertainment and geisha district of Gion in Kyoto. Located in the heart of Higashiyama, this tea house features waitresses dressed in kimonos and speaking English. You can witness an authentic tea ceremony and get introduced to the finest aspect of the Japanese culture.
6. Okitsu Club
This traditional tea house is located near the Imperial Palace of Kyoto. It suggests a high-level introduction to the refined world of the Japanese way of tea, incense ceremony, and the traditional kimono. For the tea connoisseur, it is one of the most pleasant spaces to enjoy tea ceremony in Kyoto.
7. Ran Hotei
It is a charming café on the Shopping Arcade in Kyoto’s downtown near Nijo Castle. It is created by a tea master born in Canada and it is a wonderful venue – featuring a tatami tea room and art décor from the Taisho Period. If you are not into tea ceremony, you can relax with a hot cup of coffee and enjoy some of the best cakes in Kyoto.
8. Camellia
A place which offers a real tea ceremony in English in a beautiful tea house between Kiyomizu-Dera Temple and Gion. It’s a reclusive place, a calm oasis in the most popular areas in Kyoto. The tea room is sun-bathed and elegant and is perfect to relax with some Uji matcha tea and wagashi – which is Japanese aesthetics and tradition on a plate. Camellia Wagashi is one of the oldest known versions of the dessert made of rice and cinnamon paste. It’s amazing stuff, which needs to be contemplated before you eat it…take sometime to delight in what’s served on your plate.
9. Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden’s Tea House
This Tea House was built in the place of the mansion of Lord Naito (a feudal noblemen of the Edo Era). It was opened to the public after the WWII and it blends three different architectural styles: Japanese Traditional, French Formal and English Landscape garden. It’s a perfect place to approach nature and delight in the tender greens of summer and white blossoms of spring, the Himalayan cypresses, and cedars.
10. Ippoudouchaho
Situated in the heart of Kyoto, Ippodo Tea Co has been serving the highest in quality Green tea in Japan for about 3 centuries. They want for their customers a satisfying tea experience – and they have the high spirits to offer Tea-Making workshops drawing on their nearly 300 years of vast expertise in infusing the beverage.
To Ippoudouchaho house tea is not simply a drink, but an experience to be cherished and enjoyed. It is refreshing and related to different delicate pleasures of the palate. The Japanese people are famous for their hospitality.
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And this is how the Japanese thank you for your tips and kindness:
Arigatou!
Image Copyright: Yakumo Saryo, All right reserved
