The very first Journal I wrote for this newsletter was about my daily matcha practice. It is one of the five rituals that begin every day, a practice I have kept for many years, wherever I am in the world, because I travel with my own matcha and at least one, yet often two, chawans.

I first tasted matcha almost twenty-five years ago during a tea ceremony in a teahouse within the ryokan I was staying in in Kyoto. I remember holding a warm chawan in my hands for the first time and I was mesmerized, totally enchanted by the entire experience.

Whenever I visit the Met, I try to visit the Japanese galleries to look at the tea bowls. I never tire of considering them.

I think it’s because they were always meant to be used, held, turned in someone’s hands, lifted to someone’s lips.

I love thinking about everyone who brought a single bowl into being. The person who dug the clay. The potter who formed it. The person who glazed it. The person who fired it. And then all the people who prepared matcha in it before either serving it to someone else or sipping it themself.