About

My first bowl of matcha was whisked for me when I was in kindergarten. My mother practiced the Urasenke school of tea ceremony, and for me, tea was simply part of the furniture of childhood — the smell of tatami, the sound of hot water, sweets I was told to eat before the tea, never after.

I lost my mother when I was in high school. For years, her tea utensils and kimono sat in our home, and I couldn't decide what weighed more: the thought of them going unused, or the question I had never asked her — why did she love this so much, for her whole life?

Six years ago, I began formal training in the Urasenke tradition to find out. I'm still finding out. That is rather the point of tea; nobody finishes.

Why this site exists

Fifteen years ago, when we lived in the United States, my mother held a small, informal tea gathering for neighbors and friends. I still remember their faces. Nobody was performing "Japaneseness" and nobody was consuming it — something real was being handed from one person to another, and everyone in the room could feel it.

Today, matcha is everywhere and tea ceremony is a line item on Tokyo itineraries. Some of what's on offer is wonderful. Some of it is a costume with a whisk. If you're the kind of traveler who wants to understand what you're bowing to — not just photograph it — it is genuinely hard to tell the difference from a booking page.

That's the gap this site exists to close. I review Tokyo's cultural experiences the way a practitioner would choose for a friend visiting from abroad: honestly, seasonally, and with respect for the people doing it right.

How I review

I live in Tokyo, work in English professionally, and practice tea under my own teacher. One note of honesty: in the tea world, a student does not attend lessons at other teachers' schools — it is a matter of etiquette and loyalty. So where I haven't experienced a venue first-hand, I say so plainly, and I assess it as a practitioner reading the program: what's served, how it's taught, what the room tells you. Where something is a tourist show rather than the real thing, I'll tell you that too — some of them are still worth your time, as long as you know what you're booking.

Everything here follows the seasons, because tea does, and because Japan does. Welcome — I'm glad you found your way here.

— Suzu