Things to Look for When Buying a Japanese Tea Bowl

Before you start rolling your eyes on the mere mentioning of something like a Japanese tea bowl, let me just tell you that there really is a difference between drinking tea in your regular morning cup and these gorgeous tea bowls. After all, tea came from the far East, and since you are the real tea devourer (you enjoy tea in the most hedonist way possible), it's simply unacceptable for you to have it in the simple cups you take your morning coffee in.

So, a short history for this cute tea sipping set coming from Japan: it's actually called a chawan, and it first came to Europe in a slightly different shape than what you might find today. It had no handles, and it was a simple small bowl. The set with the sipping cups was mainly used by the rich back in Japan, since tea used to be extremely expensive. And it was made without handles because the Japanese didn't want to scorch their fingers while holding the cup. They wanted something genteel. The Europeans however, found this sipping cup very inconvenient and hard to manage, so they decided to add handles. Since the shape of the cup isn't exactly made to support handles, the entire mission was rather hard. In the end, handles did manage their way on the Japanese tea bowl resulting in their shape of today.

How to spot the right Japanese tea bowl? Easy, just pay attention to these few things:

1. The Shape

You will find all kinds of tea bowls today; some will be bigger than others, wider, too short and similar. What you should be looking for is a short and wide bowl – a flared out shape. This is because of practicality reasons: the flared design is better at allowing the tea to cool down a little before you can enjoy it fully. The tea needs to cool down before consumption in order for you to be able to really feel the flavours and aromas of it.

2. The Good Size

The actually good size of the chawan is large enough so you can pour more than one sip of tea in it, and not burn your hands while holding it, since you know, there won't be any handles on the real Japanese tea bowl. So, instead of holding the chawan with a cloth underneath, get a larger one which you can hold by the rim.

3. Aesthetic Qualities

The way the entire cup with the dried leaves, liquid and all the colours the mixture creates is an experience of itself. Add to that the aroma of the tea and you have one pleasurable experience. So, choose the interior of the chawan carefully; back in the days, tea liquid was often lighter, and therefore the chawan was made darker, so that the liquid shows off better. But today, there are so many colour options and designs you can easily fin one designed by your taste. The point is, to make sure the cup you choose is in accordance with the tea liquid, you know, for aesthetic beauty.  Enjoy!