Kyoto Cuplets (Part I): Seeing The Rainbows at Tearoom Toka
The first in a series of poems about the other old capital and my five days of getting rocked by tea experiences there.
It’s 8:09 AM on a rather grey morning here in Kamakura but fear not, dear reader, for later this afternoon I’ll be at the Studio Ghibli Museum in Tokyo with my younger brother. I’ve just prepared for him Tearoom Toka’s Matcha Asa — a blend of Asatsuyu and Sayamamidori cultivars from Asamiya in Shiga Prefecture. This batch is from May 2022 and rides more astringent waves than I’m used to but has a lot of personality. Besides, he asked for something more “mid” after I served him the umami overload of Hoshinoseichaen’s Seiju, of Tea Master fame. His thoughts?
“They both kick like different mules.”
Fair enough. He’s in town for two weeks and I couldn’t have fuzzier feelings about it. Tears came even as I just waited for him outside the international arrival’s barricades. To share this country, this town—my beloved Kamakura—with a family member is special in ways only tea can explain.
Leading up to his arrival though, I spent 5 days in Kyoto, lost in a swirl of excellent meals, fall foliage, and characters, temples, and tea times full of irreverent reverence. I realized by day two that there was no way to catalog these memories in anything like linearity—no matter how many words I use. And so, as in times before with nowhere else to go and no paint to paint with, we turn to the poem.
This first one is inspired by my visit to Tearoom Toka and the famed Nichinichi Gallery (日日 gallery nichinichi / 冬夏 tearoom toka). It’s recommended to have a reservation if you want to enjoy tea at their small tea bar. We didn’t. Got lucky. We tried several teas and cold brews from their wildly priced but genuinely delicious bottled Seisei teas and also visited an exhibition upstairs by lacquer artist Takahiro Yamamoto. The teas were stellar and pieces in the exhibition were incredible (spoiler alert: I bought one, which I will poem about at a later date) but what struck me most was the manner in which we were served the tea. That’s what this poem is about.
Temae / 点前
Never will I wonder
About
Cup shapes
Leaf ratios
Low lights
Wood grain
Rhythms grooved in the table
No more will I inquire
Again over
Time spent
Teachers sought
Styles chosen
Years in continual
Operation
Instead, for the rest
Of my tea drinking days
I will wonder alone
And with you now
About how to look
Not down but out
At that bonsai horizon
Only an open tea pot
Only a pile of leaves
Only water and waiting
And watching them
Like a first-time lover
Overlooking a city
She’s always known
But had never seen light up
Until now
Back then I heard this effect
Called "Seeing The Rainbows"
But what I saw her see
Were sparkles of capital lights
Maybe that's the pot of gold
So I will ask myself
Whether I can ever see tea leaves
With the same awe
As a teenager in Everywhere
Looks out at her hometown
On that first trip
To makeout point