How Kyoto Breaks Your Heart by Florentyna Leow

Author:Florentyna Leow [Leow, Florentyna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781915628015
Publisher: The Emma Press

A Bowl of Tea

USUCHA

He begins to make tea. Sitting on his heels, seiza-style, he folds a purple silk cloth, tucks it into his obi, and then unfurls it again. He gently wipes the tea scoop and the lacquered tea canister with the cloth. Each fluid and deliberate movement is the result of decades of practice.

I’m sitting with a handful of tour guests on the floor of a tearoom, barely breathing, conversation having given way to rapt attention. We have just eaten a tea sweet: a steamed mochi filled with shiroan. Steaming has rendered its skin soft and pliant, and my fingertips sink into it as I pick it up. A dash of miso gives the white bean paste a subtle, savoury edge. Its sweetness lingers on my tongue.

Today, we will drink usucha – thin tea, a cappuccino-smooth whisked suspension of matcha powder and hot water. This is what tea practitioners consider ‘thin’, and what the rest of the world thinks of when you say ‘matcha’. It cannot be rushed: the water has been slowly heating in the kettle over charcoal for an hour now, murmuring like rain in a forest.

Having cleaned and purified his tools, he measures several scoops of matcha into a bowl and pours a scant dipperful of hot water over. He dips the bamboo whisk into the bowl, its slender splines hovering over the bottom. His left hand steadying the bowl on the mat, he whips his wrist back and forth. Slowly at first, then faster, until his hand blurs. I have come to think of this as the speed of tea. You can hear the tea take shape, frothing with the vigorous shaka-shaka sound of whisking. How the rough splashing of hot water against the sides of the bowl softens, eases into the velvety sound of tea as the tea comes to life. His hand slows, sweeping the whisk from side to side, breaking up the larger bubbles that have formed on top. And then the tea is ready.

He turns the bowl clockwise twice. Still kneeling, he moves quietly on his knees, places the bowl in front of me. We bow to each other. I take the bowl, and turn it clockwise twice.

I raise the bowl to my mouth and drink the tea. It’s silky and leaf-sweet, flooding my tongue with the taste of spring.

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