A Hoji Homecoming
The merits and drawbacks of bartering for hood passes with roasted green tea.
They told me to beware of winters in Japan but it’s been consistently warmer and drier in Kamakura than Los Angeles since I’ve moved here. I write this at 11:07 AM under a cloudless blue sky, listening to the purr of waves compete with the hum of traffic on Highway 134 (not to be confused with Highway 143). A tombi—black kite—just flew overhead as I tilted the last sip of the first steep of a roasted green tea—aka hojicha—from Gokase, Miyzaki down the hatch.
I’m back on the roof deck where we kicked this whole party off and it will likely be the last time I can write from up here, so consider this a toast.
Teas from gokase have been a revelation since moving. The kuki hojicha (kuki meaning sticks and stems from the plant, as well as tea leaves) that Sakurai roasts in-house is remarkably light, refreshing and somehow grittily distinctive. This one is made from the minamisayaka cultivar, which translates to southern exhilaration (南爽).
What makes a tea southernly exhilarating, you ask?
I guess you just gotta make it right, share it right and drink it right. Right?
I wanted to hash out a long explainer of hojicha—about why it often has less caffeine than other teas or how different the in-house roasted varieties taste from the ones roasted at the factories—but since hojicha feels like a tea best enjoyed in winter, I’ll save that primer for when that season rolls around again.
All you, dear reader, need to know is that I have a dog named after hojicha (Hoji will be moving in with us at long last this weekend after being barred from the sublease and staying with his grandpappy’s) and if this face isn’t cause for getting hip to the trip, then I don’t know what is:
Plus, now they’ve got hojicha in ice creams and boutique coffee shops across the U.S. and it’s only a matter of time before it’s tossed around with matcha as the dynamic duo of Japanese tea flavorings in every variety of snack and desert imaginable (it’s already that way in Japan). What’s great about hojicha is that it’s less fussy than other Japanese teas: you can usually rock the water at a full boil, you can be skimpy or reckless with the portioning and still get a good flavor, and it’s got hints of the dark, earthiness (especially kuki-hojicha) that people find in pu’erh, or for that matter, coffee.
I’ve been drinking hojicha all winter since arriving in Japan. From Yame (also via Sakurai) as well as the Gokase. I also chose one from Shizuoka (via my local haunt here in Kamakura, called Edamura-en) to gift to my new neighbors in our new hood up the street from the beach, tucked away in a cozy corner in the mountains around Omachi.
I got to know my neighbors pretty well in Exposition Park over seven years. We shared laughs and tears (and even a joint on a particularly strange 4th of July). We lived in a soundscape of helicopter blades, house parties, car crashes, birdsongs, dog escapes, psychotic ramblings, and gunshots. Our views featured baby’s first steps, domestic arguments pouring out into the streets and police tape. I witnessed several small films from my front porch: from reality shows (someone’s ex keying their car) to nature shows (a cooper’s hawk snatch a dove out of the sky and devour it).I also basked in moments of debilitating silence, where a late Tuesday morning could be so quiet that I felt as if I was on an abandoned film set rather than in the heart of one of the biggest cities on Earth.
In short, I became close to my neighbors over my seven years there. I watched them raise their kids. I watched their hearts break. I bantered about football. I imagined their lives and they might have imagined mine, but we only learned about each other in little bite-sized pieces—Halloween candy friendships—when tragic moments and surprising interactions sprung up. I was grateful to know them and I miss them now.
My new hood is the quietest I’ve ever known. People don’t encroach on the invisible barrier between driveways. They don’t shut their car doors, but rather gently fold them closed and then lean on them until they click into place. I’ve lived on mountain sides in Utah, Medellin and Rio de Janeiro but none so peaceful as Omachi. It’s as if the many temples in Kamakura have extended their grounds to include certain portions of the town and Omachi is one of them. I ran with coins in my pocket the other day and people looked at me like I was blasting a trumpet up and down the block. Lesson learned.
An old custom in Japan—not different from the way it may have been in the US—was to introduce yourself to your new neighbors with a gift. Last week we went around to the houses surrounding our new pad and handed out bags of hojicha as a gesture of goodwill. I held hoji, the dog, in one arm and passed them the hoji, the tea, with the other while butchering the formal introduction process.
Yesterday an Italian gentleman crashed his bicycle in front of my house, he said, after being shocked by the sight of my beard. It turns out he is the author of one of the definitive guidebooks on Kamakura (and the one with easily the best cover photo). He requested to pet my beard to calm down after the wreck and since the old chin curtain will be three years old this Friday I decided to let him kick off the celebration early and embrace the face. I wonder now if our lively late afternoon interaction in the street between three foreigners (another new friend who owns Like Café down the block was the glue holding it all together) deducted any hojicha-earned points among on my block.
I’m on the second steep of the gokase now and it’s changed. I can feel the seasons splitting me down the middle. I’m starting to see Sakura trees in full bloom on the trails and dog walks but the row of them leading to tsurugaoka hachiman shrine along Kamakura’s most famous road are still waiting to blossom. I go every day to see if they’re any closer. I’ve never been here during Cherry Blossom season.
As I write this, it’s pouring rain and another flood watch has been issued in my home city and I hope people are safe.
It’s an impossibly pleasant day here on Zaimokuza Beach. The weather and the hoods keep changing. The seasons too—and not just from one to the next, but between what they were when we were young and what they are now.
I wonder about what else will change. I want to share these changes with the people I love but the rate keeps accelerating. I can’t keep up and I doubt I’m meant to, but that’s the impulse.
And so I guess we’re just acting on it before that also changes.
I loved how Hojicha (a personal favorite!), unfussy and unassuming, holds a calm stage for all the change around you. Pooling seasons, moments, and experiences together, helping maintain a quality of tolerance and understanding.