Tea Ceremony (Yu Jin Yin)

One would find it strange that there are so many beverages in average Japanese
convenience store—not just any beverages I mean, but the ones that are replications of
the Japanese traditional tea, such as green tea, black bean tea and so on. The tea flavored
beverages are filled in the plastic bottles and stationed in cold fridges, unlike the
traditional tea (which would be hot). Recently the Korean Well-being boom has swept
over the country and many of the beverage companies have benchmarked Japanese tea
beverages as well.
I assume that the traditional Tea Ceremony culture of Japan influenced this
excessive amount of tea beverages. Compared to other countries there are much more
tea-like beverages in Japan. Moreover, just random restaurants (even the ones that have
nothing to do with traditional Japanese cuisine, like a curry restaurant) would give the
customers some kind of tea instead of water. Tea constitutes a huge part of the Japanese
culture, and the tea culture is visible everywhere.
For instance, in one of the most famous Japanese soap opera, Hana Yori Dango
(Men over Flowers) the female main character Tsukushi suffers from complicated
customs of the tea ceremony, while one of the male characters is said to be from a
traditional tea ceremony family.
Japanese tea ceremony is more than just mere act of boiling the water, putting
the tea in, and then drinking it in the cup. A Japanese monk, Eisai, is said to have
brought the tea, tools used in the ceremony, and the manners from China around 700
years ago. The manners are very obscure, as the rules guide even the simplest
elements—what phrases to say when receiving the tea, which way to turn the head when
drinking the tea, the kinds of traditional Japanese cookies to eat according to the type of
the tea you drink, the posture, or even the pictures and writings within the room the
ceremony is held are controlled by the rules.
This seemingly superfluous complication in the tea ceremony is what makes the
Japanese culture interesting. In this busy world where growing number of people have
almost no time for leisure, or time to turn back and think about themselves, the slow
paste of the tea ceremony is invaluable. Individuals participating in the ceremony drink
the tea in a very slow speed, and it gives them time to ponder and detach themselves
from their busy daily lives.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful for us to have a cup of tea in the late afternoon, forget
everything about the busy life, and just chill, like the Japanese tea ceremony?