My copy of the Kyoto Journal’s special tea issue, number 71, arrived a couple of days ago and I was immediately impressed with what a wonderful job they did putting it together. The issue is beautifully designed cover-to-cover and it makes optimal use of the perfect-bound book-like format of a magazine. It is more than [...]
At the other end of the spectrum from careful, fully attentive sessions of gongfu cha are solutions for drinking tea while mobile, with mental energies diverted to tasks other than tea drinking. I doubt that tea on-the-go is anyone’s preferred way to enjoy tea, but it doesn’t have to be a miserable, unsatisfying compromise, particularly [...]
A couple of weeks ago I was in a local antique store, probably engaging in the ongoing and fruitless search for an Eastlake or Aesthetic Movement hall tree/coat and hat rack type of thing that suits my needs, when I spotted this beautiful antique Chinese cabinet. I wasn’t sure that I could find a place [...]
I have been trying to learn more Chinese and Japanese vocabulary, which obviously includes learning to recognize characters. As I’ve been approaching this more attentively I’ve become even more aware than usual of the number of objects in my environment that have written language on them that I do not know the meaning of. With [...]
The difference between Jing Tea’s Pre Rain Dragon Well Supreme Green Tea (Long Jing) and that green stuff available for under $4/lb in grocery stores labeled as “Dragon Well” is akin to the difference between an Elvis-themed wedding chapel in Las Vegas and the Cathedral at Notre Dame. In other words, don’t go to Vegas. [...]
I am constantly thinking about books, and reference materials, and access to information. Naturally, some of the time I think about these things in relation to tea and what data I want to be able to find and how I want it to be available to me. In this massively electronically connected world I’ve become [...]
