#48 - The Japanese Tea Ceremony

This is a gift box type set from Border's Bookstore that I bought a while back and shelved. One of my great passions in life is tea, not your average teabag or flavored concoction but real teas from China, Taiwan, and Japan many hand harvested and processed. The Japanese tea ceremony is a very interesting and educational ritual but I have always found it to be too formal and scripted for my tastes, I do practice "Gong Fu" brewing however which is also a skilled brewing technique.

This box contains a very small pouch of powdered green tea, a bamboo whisk, and a book titled "The Japanese Tea Ceremony." The wares are pretty much garbage with the whisk being the best of the lot but very crude. The tea is abysmal and dark and the bowl is like a terra cotta flowerpot with no resemblance to a proper tea bowl. The book, however, is very nice. It is solely centered around Japanese tea, history, and ceremony but handles it well and seems to be properly researched and as thorough as its small size allows. I'm actually Not Recommending this one as it offers no great value or benefit and there are better books on tea ceremony out there.