Kanazawa: Private Tea Ceremony in a Tea Master’s Machiya

Sit down in a 100-year-old machiya that is also a tea master's home. Watch a full ceremony unfold, then whisk your own matcha. Always private, always in English — just your group and your host.
The address is an ordinary residential street in Kanazawa's Nishi Chaya district, a few minutes from Myoryuji, the Ninja Temple. There is no signboard, no ticket counter. You are simply welcomed into a house that has stood for more than a hundred years — and where your host actually lives.
Yuta Takahashi has practised the samurai school of tea since 2007, and has studied directly under the head of the school since 2023. Before devoting himself to tea, he spent seven years in luxury retail, including GUCCI Japan, looking after international clients. That combination is unusual, and it shapes the hour you are about to spend: rigorous in the tea room, completely at ease in conversation.
You begin by settling onto the tatami — or a chair, if you prefer; kneeling is never required. Your host explains the scroll and the seasonal flower chosen for that day, and why they were chosen. Then the ceremony begins. For about twenty minutes you sit close enough to hear the water, watching each fold of the cloth and each turn of the bowl. Nothing is rushed, and nothing is performed for an audience — because there isn't one. Yours is the only group in the room.
Then it is your turn. The whisk is placed in your hand and, guided step by step, you prepare your own bowl of matcha. It is harder than it looks and more satisfying than you expect. You drink it with a seasonal sweet made by a Kanazawa confectioner.
What remains is conversation. Guests have asked about the role of tea masters in the shogun's court, about Zen, about why a bowl is turned before drinking. Whatever you are curious about, ask — everything is hosted in English, with no interpreter standing between you and your host.
Guests from 49 countries have sat in this room. Many tell us it was the quietest hour of their journey through Japan, and the one they remember longest.

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