See also Wagashi Resources (Acknowledgements) for a related post.

At some point in my tea career, I decided to be the “wagashi guy.” It wasn’t necessarily a conscious choice. Some events that happened over the years:

  • Back at Japan House, we had fresh omogashi every lesson.
  • I joined as many Wagashi Issho workshops as I could in Japan.
  • I volunteered to be part of the sweets committee for our Midorikai Christmas Chakai and helped my senpai churn out a hundred (?) sweets.
  • After coming home and moving to Colorado, I realized that there were few-to-no places to get traditional sweets.
  • I started teaching out of my home, with a “tea room” that was literally gaffer tape on carpet to mark out host and guest mats.
  • My present teacher, Glenn Pereira sensei, is known as a sweets expert.

When we opened our keikoba at our new house, I made a promise to myself that I would do my best to make fresh sweets for every lesson. I didn’t really think about why; it just felt like the right thing to do.

Burnout

My day job is high pressure and stressful, and as a result, I’m left with little energy to evaluate other parts of my life. My beliefs in who I am as a teacher, my “elevator pitch” on why I love tea, even my daily routine. It’s been challenging to carve out time to think about those things.

In the absence of reflection, I just keep going on momentum. I teach because I’ve always wanted to teach. I study tea because I love tea. I make sweets because it’s something I do. But momentum can only carry you so far.

In my case, I hit a critical point of burnout a few months ago. My job consumed every last bit of my energy, and I didn’t even have enough energy left to allow momentum to carry me forward. Holding class didn’t bring me joy, and engaging in tea in general felt like a chore, not like how it should feel to do something you love.

For better or for worse, this isn’t my first experience with burnout. Burnout casts a dim shadow over everything, and while it is an indicator that you need to course correct, it is not an indicator that everything in your life needs radical change. I knew the love for tea was still there. I just needed to find it.

I’ve made some life changes since then. Most importantly, I’ve reevaluated my relationship with work. I still love what I do, but I’ve realized that I need to set clearer boundaries with myself. I need to draw a harder line between what is and isn’t my problem, and not try to take on the world. I’ve also started to carve out more time outside of work to sit quietly with my thoughts, to think about what I want to do before just letting momentum make the default choice for me.

The good news is that I’ve come out the other side still loving tea. The reason I found for why I love tea is simple: it engages me.

  • It began by engaging me meditatively. Giving yourself the opportunity to focus exclusively on what is happening right in front of you, even for a few minutes, was and still is something I love.
  • Then, it expanded out into other areas. I learned about Dou Gaku Jitsu, and this idea that being a chajin is multi-faceted. You can always improve your weak areas, but it’s also okay to identify with and deepen your connection to the one that draws you most.
  • There are so many areas I can work on and improve:
    • My physicality in temae
    • Balancing gentleness and assertiveness in teaching
    • Thinking about temae holistically, and working through my mental framework of how these different sequences and placements fit together
    • My Japanese language ability
    • Seasonality and overall sensitivity to how one should comport themselves in the tea room
    • Gaku, just overall
    • Chaji, also just overall

Every single area of tea is a bottomless well where I could spend as much or as little time as I desire. If one area starts to lose its luster for me, I can jump into another. For who I am as a person, having a domain with infinite breadth and depth that captivates me to this degree is more than enough of a reason to love something.

No compromises

Now, sweets 🙂 In that same reflection, I realized why I make sweets.

There aren’t that many tea-related things which I can offer with zero compromise. Doing tea in the states usually means some amount of compromise. For example, spaces in Kyoto that we were lucky enough to use had:

  • A full roji, with an inner and an outer garden
  • A yoritsuki for changing, an inner machiai for waiting, and an outer koshikake machiai between seatings
  • Koma with appropriately-small doors, hiroma with full fusuma
  • Ro cuts in every place, as well as a proper dairo
  • Tea availability sufficiently diverse to be able to rotate every week
  • A full mizuya with canonically-arranged shelving
  • Appropriate flowers in bloom for every season
  • Charcoal and ash
  • Reminders in daily life of tea manner
  • Access to chakai

I don’t expect to have all of these things, nor do I think it’s necessary for students to have this abundance to deepen their tea practice. But I would be remiss if I didn’t try to bring in as much as I could to give students a genuine experience.

So what can I offer with no compromise?

For me, the answer is sweets*. I am strictly an amateur, and you can find better versions of every single thing I make at the various incredible wagashiyasan around Kyoto. What I’m giving my students though is undeniably authentic, and that makes me feel good.

*Of course, the real answer is kokoro 🙂 But for me, that is baseline. If you decide you want to share tea with others, you must enter that path with a genuine and supportive heart. Not too much else matters.