| meditating on a rainy day ... new green tea  |
The sad truth after the earthquake on March 11, 2011
first tea harvest -
the geiger counter keeps ticking
and ticking
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kigo for late spring
茶摘み chatsumi, picking tea leaves
茶摘歌 chatsumi uta, song of the tea pickers
chatsumime 茶摘女（ちゃつみめ）girls picking tea
In olden times, girls dressed in special kimono and headgear would go out to pick the tea leaves.
Click HERE to look at photos.
chatsumigasa 茶摘笠（ちゃつみがさ）straw hat of the tea pickers
chatsumikago 茶摘籠（ちゃつみかご）basket for the tea leaves
CLICK here for PHOTOS !
te hajime 手始（てはじめ）first picking (of tea leaves)
ichibancha 一番茶（いちばんちゃ）first picked tea
nibancha 二番茶（にばんちゃ）second picked tea
sanbancha 三番茶（さんばんちゃ）third picked tea
yobancha 四番茶（よばんちゃ）fourth picked tea
chayama 茶山（ちゃやま）mountain with tea plants
chayamadoki 茶山時（ちゃやまどき）time to go in the mountain with tea plants (for picking)
chatsumidoki 茶摘時（ちゃつみどき）time for picking (plucking) tea
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more kigo for late spring
seicha 製茶 (せいちゃ ) processing tea leaves
..... chatsukuri, cha tsukuri 茶つくり（ちゃつくり）
chamomi 茶揉み（ちゃもみ）massaging tea leaves
. . . CLICK here for Photos !
hoiroba 焙炉場（ほいろば）place for roasting tea leaves
hoiroshi 焙炉師（ほいろし）tea rosting master
cha no ha eri 茶の葉選り（ちゃのはえり）selecting tea leaves
kikicha 聞茶 (ききちゃ ) tasting tea ("listening to tea" )
..... kikicha 利茶（ききちゃ）
kagicha 嗅茶（かぎちゃ）smelling tea
..... kagicha 嚊茶（かぎちゃ）
cha no kokoromi 茶の試み（ちゃのこころみ）testing tea
after the tea leaves are processed, the first tea is tested in the company.
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新茶 shincha, new tea, fresh green tea
Tea Ceremony Saijiki
kigo for early summer
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Daruma san, 達磨さん、
the Indian Monk Bodhidaruma, founder of the Zen sect, practised Zazen for long hours.
When he got sleepy, he cut off his eyelids and threw them away.
Later he found a plant had grown out of them.
He collected the leaves and brewed the first tea
... says the legend.
. KIGO with Daruma San
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tea is a topic in coffee land Yemen.
So I need some kigo to point out when I drink it.
Here we use a tea glass.
the tea glass
warms up farmers' hands -
mountain dew
Heike Gevi
Kigo Hotline
. YEMEN SAIJIKI
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Shincha (新茶, Shincha), literally "new tea", represents the first month's harvest of Sencha. Over three quarters of all tea produced in Japanese tea gardens is Sencha, a tea selected for its pleasant sharpness and fresh qualities complementing a leaf of high uniformity and rich emerald color. Today Sencha is steam treated before further processing with hot-air drying and finally pan-frying.
Regions: Most regions make a number of kinds of Sencha, which are named according to the kind of processing used. Needle leaf Sencha is processed in Shizuoka and in the Yame region of Fukuoka. In other areas, including Kyushu, the comma-shaped leaf form is processed.
Popularity: Available for a limited time during the first crop of tea it is popular in Japan and is available in only limited amounts outside of it.
Flavor/Aroma: The earliest season Shincha (first month's Sencha harvest) is available in April in the south of Japan, and prized for its high vitamin content, sweetness and superior flavor. The flavour is full, robust, grassy and vegetal with a resinous aroma and minimal astringency.
© More in the WIKIPEDIA !
More Reference !
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菅笠を着て覗き見る茶摘かな
suge-gasa o kite nozoki miru chatsumi kana
Tea-leaf picking:
Trying on her reed kasa,
She gazes in the mirror.
Shikou (1664-1731)
Tr. Blyth
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sanmon o dereba nihon zo chatsumi uta
outside the temple gate
it's Japan again!
song of the tea leaf pickers
. Tagami Kikusha 田上菊舎 .
Discussing the translation
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妻亡くし一人の夜の新茶かな
tsuma nakushi hitori no yo no shincha kana
I lost my wife ...
alone at night I drink
new green tea
Tr. Gabi Greve
© 樋口吉威 Horiguchi
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CLICK for more Japanese Haiga !
oshiego kara shincha todoku Shizuoka san
from my student
new tea arrives ...
from famous Shizuoka
Tr. Gabi Greve
© 石狼 Stone Fox
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Cross-cultural flowers ...
Green tea with milk and sugar ...
Stash Green Chai Spice
Indian Chai is enjoyed in cities and the smallest of villages, and is usually offered to every visitor to a home.
Chai is usually brewed very strong with lots of sugar and milk and often concentrated. Traditional Indian Chai combines rich black tea that is boiled in milk, and flavored with local spices such as sweet cinnamon, sharp clove, penetrating cardamom, and occasionally black peppercorns, pungent ginger and hot red chilies, and sweetened with sugar.
Chai can be both calming and stimulating, encouraging both conversation and relaxation. Stash Green Chai Spice lends a modern twist to the traditional Chai by blending Lung Ching or Dragonwell Chinese green tea with cinnamon, whole cloves, cardamom, ginger root and sarsaparilla. The result is a flavorful and spicy tea that goes well with milk and sugar and may be enjoyed any time of the day.
© www.stashtea.com/
Thanks to Cat for introducing this beverage!
Read more in my Daruma Museum:
The Old Tea and Horses Road from Yunnan to Lhasa
茶馬古道（ちゃばこどう) Chaba Kodoo
"West Lake Dragon Well" 西湖龍井
Tea from China: Lung Ching, Long Jing
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Daruma Doll and Zazen
座禅のだるまさん
© PHOTO : だるまさん色々
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More Daruma Dolls doing Zazen
These are clay dolls from Nakano.
中野土人形・座禅だるま
Photos from my friend Ishino.
Nakano clay dolls and Daruma
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More of my MEDITATION Haiku
. . . Read my Haiku Archives 2008
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Posts
11 comments:
Japan Times May 2002
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20020526a2.html
The pick of the crop
By YOKO HANI
IRUMA, Saitama Pref.
-- Despite global warming and technological developments in agriculture worldwide, still some things have never changed. Just ask tea farmer Toshiharu Kato.
Every year, Kato begins picking the tea leaves on his farm in Iruma City, Saitama Prefecture, around hachiju-hachi ya in early May -- just as tea farmers have been doing for generations. Hachiju-hachi ya is the 88th day after risshun (Feb. 4, the first day of spring according to the Chinese calendar), and it is traditionally the day when farmers would begin planting out seeds and transplanting.
All of the leaves harvested in the couple of weeks following that 88th day make up the year's shincha(new tea), which is believed to be the most flavorsome tea. However, those picked in the season's opening days are considered to be the highest quality of all -- and are certainly the most valuable.
The weeks and then days leading up to harvest time, therefore, can be particularly nerve-racking. As one of the most northerly tea-producing prefectures, Saitama's tea crops are constantly at risk of frost damage, Kato explains. Just one chilly morning, he says, can freeze the buds and destroy the crop. On the other hand, the cooler temperatures encourage the plants to grow thicker leaves that make for a rich-tasting tea.
So when hachiju-hachi ya arrives, the 60-year-old farmer examines the soft, yellowish new leaves with great care. To the untrained eye, they appear simply fresh and beautiful, but to Kato, they reveal the precise moment to begin picking.
"Usually we have just three 'best days' for picking [shincha]," he says. "The moment to begin is indicated by the growth of the four new leaves on top of each spray."
Weather, of course, also plays a role in deciding when to begin harvesting. Farmers pick tea leaves only on a sunny day, to better preserve their scent, Kato explains. The collected leaves are processed the same day so that they do not lose any of their freshness and flavor.
It is a delicate process that requires care and concentration -- after all, making good shincha is so important a task for tea farmers that it constitutes the core of their life. Kato has observed the ritual annually for the past 40 years, as his father did before him.
In Kato's father's day, however, the work was more manual and time-consuming. Gone are the days when farmers and their families, bearing baskets, went into the sloping fields for the entire day. No longer are the freshly picked leaves steamed and rolled by hand for hours that night.
Now, a tea-picking tractor helps Kato harvest the leaves efficiently. Driven by his son, Motohiro, the tractor goes up and down the lines of tea bushes, precision-cutting the top leaves and blowing them into a large bag at the back of the machine.
In the space of two hours, the machine can collect some 250 kg of leaves from one 800-sq.-meter section of the tea field. The fresh crop is processed in Kato's factory the same afternoon. There, machines sterilize the leaves with steam to prevent oxidation, roll them to liberate the juices and enzymes sealed within, and then dry them with warm air. By nightfall, the leaves have been processed into needle-shaped green tea, just one-fifth of their original weight.
In Saitama, farmers harvest tea leaves twice a year: from early to mid-May (shincha), then again from late June to mid-July after new growth has returned. Although some tea-producing regions have a third harvest, in Saitama, the rest of the year is devoted to caring for the tea bushes to ensure a good crop the next season.
The northernmost of the principal tea-producing prefectures, Saitama ranks sixth nationally in terms of area under cultivation, following Shizuoka, Kagoshima, Mie, Kumamoto and Kyoto prefectures. (Nearly half of all the green tea produced in Japan comes from Shizuoka Prefecture.)
Famous for its tea, known as Sayama cha, Saitama is one of the oldest tea-growing areas in the country. The first bushes are believed to have been planted there in the Kamakura Period (1185-1333), and large-scale production began around 1800, with neighboring Edo (Tokyo) as the main market.
A closeup of the tractor's precision-cutting mechanism
Today the market for Saitama's green tea is no longer so straightforward. The produce of Kato and his fellow farmers must compete with a wide range of teas, principally black tea and oolong. These are all derived from the same plant, Camellia sinensis, an evergreen, medium-size shrub. However, black tea is fermented and oolong, semi-fermented; green tea is unfermented, a factor in the health benefits attributed to the drink.
"Drink-makers have successfully promoted the idea that green tea is good for your health," Kato says, adding that the recent popularity of PET-bottled green tea has raised consumers' awareness of the traditional drink. Indeed, according to statistics released by the Japan Tea Central Association, the per capita consumption of green tea rose some 10 percent during the period from 1995 to 2000.
The boom could hardly be better timed. Government figures reveal that the total area dedicated to tea cultivation in Japan has been steadily decreasing, with a corresponding decline in the number of tea farmers.
But Kato remains optimistic, and hopes the recent positive developments will eventually lead to a revival in the appreciation of green tea in its more traditional forms. The farmer believes the true flavor and aroma of his tea is best brought out when prepared in a kyusu (teapot), and he wants younger generations to experience it in this way.
"I want more and more people to know the genuine taste of green tea," he says, looking out over his fields with pride.
bow thank you very much
Gabi san
I drank new green tea too
Hachijyuuhachiya ... 88 nights
good mild green tea
Tomorrow is last holiday in golden week
have a wonderful haiku day
etsuko
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cherrypoetryclub/message/33335
Nice, multi-layered feel I get with this Gabi!!!
KR.
Very nice, Gabi.
Works beautifully without the references, but they do add layers without adding weight.
B.B.
I admire this poem with, or without, the explanation. Now that I know this legend, my respect for Daruma san increases, as well as for the storyteller.
A real pleasure Gabi san.
B.D.
i liked it very much to read your haiku, Gabi (green tea! my family and i love it!)
and i liked it to read about this legend -- very interesting!
A. from Germany
Delicate haiku with that magic touch of yours Gabi.
enjoyed.
D.D.
Excellently done, Gabi san.
I like green tea, too -- green chai.
neko
This is just lovely, Gabi!
A peaceful, contented moment...
brings a sigh...
L. C...
Nice, quiet haiku,Gabi... and the thread's been a good read, too.
l. a...
A cup of Green Tea
Shared with a monk
Can quench the thirst for love
Nataliya Roslikova
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