What do you say at a tea ceremony?
Updated By Mio.KShare
People who are about to sit in their first tea room (often a visitor session in Kyoto or Tokyo) almost always ask the same thing, and it is rarely about the tea. It is: am I going to have to say something, and what happens if I get it wrong.
You can get through a tea gathering without saying a single Japanese word, and nobody will think less of you. If you would like to say something, four short phrases cover nearly everything a guest says: one to the person beside you, one to the host before you drink, one for the sweet, and one at the end.
For the whole sequence a guest follows, from the sweet to returning the bowl, see what happens at a tea ceremony.
The four phrases
| What you say | When | Who you say it to | What it literally means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Osaki ni | Just before you drink or eat ahead of the guest next to you | The guest seated after you | Ahead of you — excuse me for going first |
| Okashi o chodai itashimasu | Before you eat the sweet | The host | I receive the sweet |
| Otemae chodai itashimasu | Before the first sip | The host | I receive the tea you have made |
| Kekko na otemae de gozaimashita | After you have finished the bowl | The host | That was a fine bowl of tea |
Three of the four are addressed to the host, and one to the person next to you. That is the part most lists leave out, and it is what makes the phrases make sense: you are acknowledging that someone made this for you, and that you are eating before your neighbor.
How to say them
Japanese has no stressed syllable. Every beat is the same length, and the n at the end of a word is a beat of its own. Chodai is cho·da·i, three beats, not two. Itashimasu is i·ta·shi·ma·su, with the last u barely voiced, so it lands closer to itashimas. If that is unfamiliar, the same rules are worked through with the names of the tools in how to pronounce matcha.
Say them quietly. These are not announcements. In a small room, a murmur carries perfectly well, and the volume people use for them is much lower than a first-time guest expects.
The part nobody tells you: silence is normal
A tea room is quiet. Long stretches pass with nothing said at all, and that quiet is not awkwardness waiting to be filled. Conversation, where it happens, tends to belong to the first guest, who asks the host about the day — the scroll, the flowers, where the tea came from — and the other guests listen. At a large public gathering a seating may last only twenty minutes; at a full gathering the quiet runs for about four hours.
If you are visiting a public tea room as a traveler, this is the single most useful thing to know. You are not expected to carry a conversation in a language you do not speak. A bow, a thank-you in whatever language you have, and attention to what is in front of you are read as good manners everywhere.
Behind all of this is a phrase from the tea ceremony, ichigo ichie: host and guest treat the gathering as one that will not come again.
What I am not going to tell you
How far to turn the bowl, which hand goes where, when to bow and how deeply: these are taught in practice, and they are not identical across schools. I practice in one of them. Writing my school's way as though it were the only way would be a small dishonesty, and the internet already has a great deal of that on this subject.
What is common to all of them is the reason underneath, which is simpler than the choreography: the bowl is turned so that you do not drink from its front, because its front has been offered to you. You can hold that idea and let the details go.
One small thing to carry: a pad of white paper for your sweet and your fingers. What kaishi is explains it.
If you are making tea at home instead
None of this is needed to make a bowl of thin tea in your kitchen, and I do not say any of it when I make tea for myself. The phrases exist because tea was made for someone. The first time you whisk a bowl and hand it to a friend, one of them becomes useful on its own.
The sweet comes before the tea for a reason worth knowing, and that reason is about the order of tastes rather than about manners: why the sweet is eaten first. If you are working out what thin tea and thick tea are, usucha and koicha covers both, and the essay on tea and a tired heart is the closest I get to explaining why any of it is done at all.
Questions I get asked
What do you say before drinking matcha at a tea ceremony?
Otemae chodai itashimasu, addressed to the host, which means roughly I receive the tea you have made. Said quietly, just before the first sip.
What does osaki ni mean?
Ahead of you. It is said to the guest seated after you, before you eat or drink ahead of them, and it is the one phrase that is not addressed to the host.
Do I have to say anything as a foreign guest?
No. A bow and a thank-you are enough, in any language. The phrases are offered, not required, and a host who has invited guests from abroad is not waiting to catch you out.
What do you say at the end?
Kekko na otemae de gozaimashita — that was a fine bowl of tea. It is said after the bowl is empty, to the host.
Are the phrases the same in every school?
The wording is close, but the timing, the bows and some of the expressions differ between schools and between teachers. If you are attending a particular tea room, their way is the right way for that room. And if you are wondering what you have been invited to, a gathering is not a religious occasion.
Where this fits
If you would like to make thin tea at home and hand a bowl to someone, the two objects that matter are the bowl and the whisk: a Mino-yaki chawan, wide and low, and a hundred-prong Takayama chasen, which come together in the starter set. For everything that comes before that, the beginner's guide. If you are going to a tea ceremony yourself, what to wear is the other thing people ask about.
Written by Mio.K, who chooses everything in this shop by hand in Japan.