Ocha-no-sato Tea Museum

Have you heard of the name, Enshu Kobori (1579-1647)?   He was a feudal lord and tea master.  He added brightness and beauty on former tea masters’ “wabi-sabi” style, and created his own tea.  It is called “kirei-sabi”, or gracefulness and simplicity.  He held about 400 tea ceremonies and invited 2,000 guests in his life.  What impresses me is that he was so versatile.  He was talented not only in tea, but also in calligraphy and poetry, and supervised in pottery making, building gardens, tea houses and even castles.

The other place we stopped on the Shizuoka trip was Ocha-no-sato tea museum, which has a tea house and garden designed by Enshu.  It is not a large museum, but I think it’s an interesting place for tea lovers.  It is the place where I experienced tea picking (seasonal activity).

At the café there, you can enjoy different teas that you cannot usually try at ordinary cafe.  Most of teas sold on the market are blended different teas, so you don’t have many chances to try single breed tea.  But there, they serve different breed teas (such as; yabukita, asatsuyu, saemidori and so on) and also teas from different production regions (such as; Simada, Makinohara and kawane).   For a tea enthusiast like me, it is kind of exciting to choose a tea from that selection.  What I had was yutakamidori breed iced tea.  I wanted to tell you the taste of tea, but it was a few weeks ago.  I only remember that it was good but don’t exactly remember how good it was, haha.  Sorry (^^;;

The menu

You prepare your own tea

Yutakamidori

Beautiful!

  

Ocha-no-sato tea museum (Japanese): http://www.ochanosato.com/

Enshu's Tea school: http://www.enshuryu.com/English/index.html