Steeped in Kyoto
Kyoto recalibrates time the way an old-school clockmaker resets his watch: patiently. One may arrive planning in bullet points and a bucket list—sites to tick off, trains to catch, photographs to take before the light tilts, but Kyoto automatically slows you down. Pavements narrow; corners bend; a wooden gate interrupts your hurry.
A traditional Japanese tea ceremony known as Chadō or Chanoyu. Image credit: Arts and Designs Japan.
There are the expected spectacles: geishas gliding through Gion at dusk, silk trading secrets with the dark; maple leaves descending in orderly flames upon stones that remember each passing step. But this thins if you stay. Listen for the quieter rituals: water poured into cast iron releasing a hollow, submerged chime; bamboo brushing clay with a dry, intimate rasp; and steam rising from a porcelain bowl, carrying the faith of age-old gestures performed.
This is where the story turns—not to the matcha tiramisu of aesthetic cafe counters, or to the cups posed for Instagram—but to how Kyoto actually drinks its tea: to the morning sencha poured at kitchen tables; to the neighbour who stops at a century-old shop for a paper packet of roasted hojicha; to the choreography of the tea room, where matcha is pure tradition.
Tea house near the Kamo River (1740s), Edo period, woodblock print by Nishimura Shigenaga, JH Wade Collection. Image credit: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Unsplash.
The story of tea begins with a monk and a long journey home. The sea has barely settled behind him when Myōan Eisai stepped onto familiar soil, carrying a package small in size but vast in consequence: tea leaves. Tea had first tiptoed into Japan centuries before, carried on the robes of Kūkai and Saichō, yet it was Eisai who planted it firmly in the misted valley of Uji, south of Kyoto. The city, battered by fire, storms, famine, and plague, seemed a place bereft of hope—but in the ceremony of tea, he glimpsed a balm, a gentle magic to steady the mind and mend the body. He pressed seeds into the earth, and they rooted themselves. What began as quiet ritual soon unfurled into performance: aristocrats reclined in lacquered rooms, weighing leaves like gems, tracing pedigrees with obsessive care, and tea acquired a costume of ceremony.
Myōan Eisai, famed for his pivotal role in introducing and popularising Zen Buddhism and tea culture in Japan.
Image credit: Eisa Tea Co.
Centuries later, as the age of war hardened into the pageantry of rule, Sen no Rikyū surveyed the shimmer and chose restraint. He had moved within the orbit of power—first under Oda Nobunaga, then Toyotomi Hideyoshi—where tea had become currency, displayed in gold rooms and measured by the rarity of Chinese bowls. His answer was not denunciation but reduction. He lowered the teahouse ceiling so that even the mighty must incline their heads. He narrowed the entrance to a humble crawl, asking swords and status to remain outside. He turned from porcelain brilliance to the rough Korean bowl, from lacquered sheen to clay that bore the memory of the kiln.
From his practice emerged wabi-cha: not austerity for its own sake, but a discipline of attention; not the rejection of beauty, but its distillation. In a room scarcely larger than four and a half tatami mats, tea shed its brocade and found its meaning again. Water murmured in the iron kettle. Powder met whisk. Steam lifted and disappeared. Each gesture, pared to its essence, gathered gravity. What remained was not spectacle but presence. Tea, unadorned, resumed—in the grain of clay, in the pause between movements, in time allowed to lengthen and deepen.
Sen no Rikyū defined the Japanese tea ceremony through radical simplicity and wabi-sabi aesthetics.
Image credit: Osaka.com.
What Rikyū refined within a few tatami mats, Uji sustains on a far wider canvas. The philosophy contracts the gesture; the landscape expands it. South of Kyoto, the hills fold into terraces of camellia sinensis, their order almost monastic. In spring the bushes are draped with woven screens, tempering the light to a muted green dusk. Shade alters the leaf’s chemistry: chlorophyll thickens, sweetness rises, bitterness recedes. The fields take on a saturated brilliance, as if colour itself has been steeped and concentrated.
Image credit: TEAcreativelife, Soo Chung, Unsplash.
From this husbandry comes Uji matcha, long held as the measure of excellence. The youngest leaves are plucked, briefly steamed to halt oxidation, dried, and then turned slowly between granite stones until they become powder fine enough to cling to air. Whisked into hot water, it yields a suspension at once vegetal and luminous—a green so dense it seems almost architectural.
Along the approach to Byōdō-in, tea completes its circle. Byōdō-in Omotesandō gathers centuries into its shopfronts: family-run chaya where bowls are set down with practised quiet. The matcha rests in black lacquer, its surface holding a soft sheen. Beside it, wagashi arrive in seasonal forms—plum blossom, iris, maple leaf—fleeting emblems shaped from bean paste and sugar. Field becomes powder, powder becomes bowl, and the bowl returns, once more, to stillness.
Tea plantation in Uji, and a man with a wooden box of hōjicha. Image credits: Chloé Lefleur and Perry Merrity II, Unsplash.
Yet Kyoto is not preserved in amber. The city that guards ceremony also permits reinvention.
At Ippodo, trading for more than three centuries, cedar counters glow with the sheen of long handling. The staff move with unhurried assurance, guiding visitors through gyokuro, sencha, and hojicha as though conducting a tasting rather than a lesson. Gyokuro, shaded like the leaves of Uji, is brewed at a temperature so low it feels counterintuitive; the liquor arrives thick, almost brothy, pooling on the tongue with a sustained, marine sweetness—umami drawn out to its fullest register.
Across the river, in a renovated machiya townhouse, Saryo Suisen pares the ritual back to line and light. There is no tokonoma, no tatami geometry—only whitewashed walls and glass teapots catching a muted glow. Tea is handled with near-clinical precision, each infusion measured, each pour exact. If Rikyū sought essence through shadow and clay, this is essence rendered in glass and air.
Ippodo, Kyoto. Image credit: Ippodo.
In 1860, in the tea-growing heartlands of Kyoto, Riemon Tsuji founded what would become TSUJIRI. He was guided by a principle he called YUWA—to continue innovating while sustaining tradition. It was not an abstract motto but a working creed. Tsuji refined the cultivation of gyokuro, the most prized grade of Japanese green tea, developing shading techniques that coaxed out its sweetness and depth, methods that endure to this day. He also designed a tea chest that preserved freshness during transport, allowing Kyoto’s delicate leaves to reach distant cities at a time when such journeys risked dulling their character. In recognition of his contributions to Japan’s tea industry, a statue was later erected in his honour in Kyoto.
More than a century later, that same pioneering spirit travelled beyond Japan. In 2010, TSUJIRI CHAHO—chaho meaning tea shop—opened its first overseas outpost, becoming one of the earliest traditional Japanese tea houses to expand internationally. It carried the flavours of Kyoto and Yame into new cities, yet its purpose stayed constant: to serve fresh, carefully prepared tea and let tradition evolve rather than stand still.
Long before refrigeration and airtight packaging, freshness depended on ingenuity. In Uji, Tsuji faced a problem: the finest shaded leaves lost their brilliance to heat, humidity and distance. His answer was the Chabitsu—a wooden cabinet designed to stabilise temperature and moisture. With it, fresh Uji tea could travel far from its birthplace, arriving fragrant and intact, and Japanese tea culture could journey with it.
Tea Box (Chabitsu). Image credit: TSUJIRI.
To drink tea in Kyoto is to understand the city’s essence: its patience, its refinement, its refusal to rush. You do not find it in a frappe, thick with syrup and foam. You find it in the hush of a tearoom at Camellia, in the silence of MAIKOYA at dawn, in the luminous green of Uji fields at springtime. You hold the bowl in both hands, feel its warmth seep into your palms, raise it to your lips, and drink. In that sip, you taste not just tea, but a thousand years of Kyoto—distilled into a single, fleeting moment.
Kyoto’s contradictions only deepen its devotion. Teenagers may sip bubble tea in Nishiki Market, but at home, their grandparents pour bancha into chipped porcelain cups, the kind that outlast generations. Salarymen buy canned green tea from vending machines on their commute, but on weekends, some kneel in small tatami rooms at workshops, rediscovering the art of the whisk. The city may play with trends, but it always returns to the bowl.
Japanese terminology
Bancha
A later-harvest Japanese green tea; everyday, robust, slightly more astringent.
Camellia sinensis
The botanical name of the tea plant.
Chabitsu
Traditional wooden tea chest designed to preserve freshness.
Chaho
Japanese for “tea shop.”
Chaya
Traditional Japanese teahouse.
Gyokuro
Premium shaded Japanese green tea known for sweetness and umami.
Hojicha
Roasted Japanese green tea with a warm, toasty aroma.
Machiya
Traditional wooden townhouse found in Kyoto.
Matcha
Finely ground powdered green tea used in tea ceremony.
Sencha
Common Japanese green tea brewed from whole leaves.
Tatami
Traditional woven straw floor mats used in Japanese interiors.
Tokonoma
Recessed alcove in a Japanese room for art or seasonal display.
Umami
The savoury “fifth taste,” associated with depth and brothy richness.
Wagashi
Traditional Japanese sweets served with tea.
Wabi-cha
The austere, rustic style of Japanese tea practice centred on humility and simplicity.
Wabi-sabi
The broader Japanese aesthetic philosophy that finds beauty in imperfection.