A Cup of Tea 6: Zenzai

I had matcha tea over at my friend’s house over in Kotoni the other day. During my visit she served this beautiful zenzai.

Zenzai is simply adzuki beans simmered in a sugar syrup and served with white rice dumplings. The winter version–which is served heated–is the most well known, but today of course I was served the summer version: chilled and in a delicate porcelain bell flower cup.

Another way to serve summer zenzai is to spoon it over a scoop of ice cream. This also sounds like a delightful treat, but as I cannot eat ice cream, my friend was so kind as to refrain from serving it in that way.

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My Kimono Life 16: Summer Tea

Leaf Hunting in the Park

A few friends of mine were visiting Sapporo, so I had a tea party for them. I was pretty busy as the hostess, so I wasn’t able to take many pictures of it, but I did of course wear kimono.

For the tea party, I decided to do a summer procedure called habuta. It isn’t so different from normal tea, but it utilizes fresh green leaves. So in the morning, one of my preparations tasks was to hunt from big, undamaged leaves in the park. This is where I took the picture above.

Many different kinds of leaves can be used in this procedure, but the most common kind is that of the paper mulberry. However, that isn’t so common in Hokkaido, so I picked wild mulberry leaves instead. Actually mulberry is a very charming and elegant tree, despite its common image. In the premodern period, mulberry was cultivated to serve as food for the silk worms which were raised as apart of the silk cottage industry. However in the classical period, poems used to composed on mulberry leaves and then sent to friends or lovers.

Anyway, I wore this light yellow summer kimono with a design of reeds splashed across it. With it is a blue obi, with a barely discernable design of grasses woven into it. Summer kimono are made of a see-through gauze in order to allow airflow through the whole garment. Sounds risque, but since I am also wrapped in an underkimono made of a similar gauze nothing can be seen. While out and about in the park, I also wore a red gauze coat to prevent any chance of dirtying my kimono before the tea party.

Anyway, the tea party went fairly well, although my choice of sweets ended up being poor. All three of my overseas guests barely managed to eat half of the sweet, saying “it was too sweet.” I thought this a bit ironic, because Japanese people always say that about Western sweets. I think the reason is two fold: one, modern Japanese people rarely actually eat traditional Japanese sweets anymore so they don’t know how sweet Japan’s own sweets are, and two, the type of sweetness is a little different and completely untempered by the taste of fat which is characteristic of many other sweets.

But despite the problem with the sweets, the rest of the afternoon went along lovely. With this, I will leave you with a reading of what the scroll displayed in the parlor said:

浄心生香 Scent emanates from a pure heart

 

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A Cup of Tea 5: Red Perilla

July and August are currently the hottest months of the year. Even in the snowy frontier lands of Hokkaido, the days are balmy and the cool refreshments of summer make their appearance.

Yesterday, I visited a friend of mine at the temple nearby my house and she served me Japanese sweets (not pictured) along with this delightful red perilla tea she had made. Red Perilla (あかしそ) is a Japanese herb, and while I call it a tea, it is in fact the juice of the leaves. It is naturally this deep crimson colour.

It was extremely suitable for the heat of the day. The sharp aroma of the juice contrasted with the two pieces of ice floating in the cup. Glass, by the way is considered cool feeling (resembling ice as it does) and thus appropriate for summer. Furthermore, the truly elegant host will chill the cup in the refrigerator beforehand as well. This cup here, by the way, is lightly etched with morning glories, calling to mind the cool morning air in this humid season.

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