Shincha Redux: A Yame Fukamushi & Shizuoka Asamushi Fresh-Out-The-Fridge, Wait-For-It, Collabo

In which a hole appears in my tearoom, so very unlike the hole in my heart at birth.

Right now, there is a man with a hammer and a chisel attacking my tea room. Let’s try that again.

There is a genius with a paintbrush adjusting my favorite canvas. Once more.

There is a wood wizard with a set of magic wands casting spells on an assemblage of dead trees in which I already worship so that I may worship more exactly with what the wood gods wish.

I can keep going but I also understand that most of us aren’t here for the practice. We’re not here for the perfection either. In fact, we’re not here at all.

Just kidding. We are. Aren’t we?

In the plainest speak I feel apt to muster now, the master carpenter that whipped this old kominka into mixed-unmartial-art dojo of my dreams is putting a small square in the bigger square of the tatami tearoom in my Kamakura abode. A sunken hearth. A ro. Like 炉

Let’s call it a hot box.

If you don’t believe me, just ask my sado sensei who lives next door and adjusted her plans to honor my tomfoolery this morning by coming over to make sure the hot box is in the right place for peak tea experiences (although if she could intervene in this newsletter, that angel 80-something years-young might say it’s the proper placement for unlimited temae tea practice).

As to how and why and when this is all happening, perhaps the monthly scroll in her tearoom just a standing long jump away from my own says it better than either of us can:

春来草自生

Translated into English, that would mean something like “Spring Arrives & The Grass Grows Naturally.” Which, on the surface, like many things Zen, you would say, “obviously, Dweez, why are you still going on about this?”

But below that tough-chewing knee-jerky you might taste the balmy truth: that if we simply live in accordance to the light and the love (and the practice if we must call it that) that is our nature, then life happens on its own, at its own pace, without too much tinkering on our part. Hands off the dials. Control ceded.

If you just keep sitting there and doing nothing a couple times a day, you’ll start realizing that you don’t need to be doing anything to be enough. Being will be enough on its own, then things will happen on the cosmic time clock. It’s something like this:

“If you exist now, you’ve always existed and you will always exist.” Laraaji x Carlos Niño show, Topanga Canyon Theatricum Botanicum, October 21, 2022

Or

“Since you’ve always been, so it seems you will always be.” - Terry Riley, Kofu Yamanashi, January 27, 2024

Or

“We are enough now. We have always been enough and we will always be enough.” ACA Loving Parent Guidebook, Page 217, Read Monday March 18, 2024

In other words, when it’s time for the hole in your floor to open up, a magician will come open it. So the person seeks the leaf, the leaf seeks the person. So your email inbox is full of automated nonsense, here is something not so very automated indeed. A nonsense with its own tang.

Oh, how careless of me.

May I introduce you to my green friends? We have here a Yame fukamushi (deep-steamed) machine-picked sencha from Hoshinoen (blend but mostly Saemidori-forward) and a Shizuoka (light-steamed) hand-picked sencha from Houkouen (single cultivar yabukita). A thick and a thin. A muddy and a crisp. A cloud and a crystal.  

One, a snuggle. The other, a slap. A kiss and a punch. A caress and a spank. You don’t need to be a masochist to bask in the latter and you don’t need to be an infant to be coddled by the former. Let’s remind ourselves that this is a world of multitudes as well as altitudes and attitudes. So exude yourself according to your fancy but give that fancy room to bloom.

Who amongst us finds it anything but amusing play to compare clouds and crystals anyway?

On Wednesday the Spring came and equinoxed us like it wasn’t a gym where people were investigated for being freaks or not. I got an email from Houkouen announcing pre-orders for 2024 shincha, new tea, as you’ll recall from my delirious shincha season posts last year.

For me, I start to salivate this time of year. I’m not speaking metaphorically. The glands on the side of my neck beside my chin start to secrete what I’ll call Pavlovian tea craving fluids. It always comes first for Chinese greens—zhuyeqing (竹叶青) from Emei Shan in my side piece Sichuan, Yongchuan Xiuya(永川秀雅) from my beloved Chongqing, and the people’s favorite, Xihulongjing (西湖龙井茶) from Hangzhou (shifeng 师峰 if I must choose).

In an effort to keep the tea cupboards from exploding with volume, I curbed some of those cravings by slurping up some of Imen’s excellent Tai Ping Hou Kui via Tea Habitat that have in the stash.

Soon after though, cravings for the emerald magic of the Japanese greens came calling. Living now in this island nation, I will not permit myself to resist these and thus, on Wednesday, I ordered my first of the Shincha teas for 2024 (even though they won’t be picked until late April).

But you see, there are those—my friend Ko of People’s Tea Fame—who swear by the easy, mellow vibes of sencha after it rests for a while. Hence, I’ve stashed away these two 2023 shinchas for a year in the refrigerator, let them adjust to room temperature for two days, then cut them open to drink for the first time today.

And mellow they are. Easy they drink indeed. They are like self-prescribed straight-jackets keeping me from leaping into the realm of buying every chagama you see on this cloth to rock on the new ro.

All praise to tea for keeping this particular madman grounded. All praise to you for reading.  Excited for us all to share in shincha season when I arrives next month. Until then, let’s stay mellow because the cherry blossoms here are about to burst open like plant firecrackers and I for one don’t need to be grassed up anymore than I already am about that.  

Remember: this is all coming from a guy who was born with an actual hole in his heart—an atrial septal defect to be exact—and who has spent his entire life trying to fill it.

Sensei’s Second Scroll

The grass 
Isn’t always
Greener

The grass 
Is always
The grass

We’re the
Ones doing
‘er’ ‘er’ ‘er’

Like we can

Conquer the world
Color the seasons
Grasser the grass

But all this erring
Is a cautionary tale
Like falling when 
It’s time to spring.