Welcoming guests from all over the world to our two teahouses in Kyōto, Japan. Join us as we explore Japanese culture, tea and history!
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There aren't too many sports-themed wagashi, but one of the most memorable was when Matsuya (松彌) created a sweet dedicated to the Hanshin Tigers (阪神タイガース)!🙌
As a passionate supporter of the baseball team, Atsuko-san was thrilled!
#Kyoto #wagashi #和菓子 #阪神タイガース
Some eye-catching morsels😋...
🎆Senbon Tamajuken's (千本玉壽軒) 'yozora' (夜空 'night sky').
🎈Colourful 'Kyofūsen' sembei (京ふうせん 'Kyōto balloons') from Suetomi (末富).
🛟Kiyome's (きよめ餅総本家) 'Fuji-dango' (藤団子).
🌈Macarons from Ladurée (ラデュレ).
#wagashi #和菓子
@jens 体 is the kanji for body and is used in health. Rather than sports, 'sports day' was originally also focused on physical health. It has been rebranded as just 'sports day' nowadays as it is thought this sounds more fun.
The first 'Health and Sports Day' (体育の日) was held on October 10th 1966, the 2nd anniversary of the opening of the 1964 Summer Olympics.
Now celebrated on the 2nd Monday of October, the holiday is intended to promote sports as well as physical and mental health.
#体育の日 #olympics #healthandsportsday
🏊♂️🧢🏉SPORTS DAY🥏🥎🧗♂️
Happy 'Health and Sports Day' (体育の日 'Taiiku-no-hi')!🥳
As you might expect, we'll be celebrating with lashings of tea and sweets, and as the holiday commemorates the 1964 Tōkyō Olympics there's a subtle Olympic theme to today's offerings🏅
The large 'chestnut tiger' (アサギマダラ), a striking butterfly with blue-green marbled wings, feed on fujibakama nectar (and other flowers from the milkweed family).
Depending on the weather the insects appear from April-November, and migrate up to 1000km to their feeding sites!
Fujibakama (藤袴) is now a near-threatened/endangered flower, but was once found growing in profusion along riverbanks.
Symbolising caring and positive memories, the fragrant plant was commonly used in perfumes and hair products.
#Japan #fujibakama #藤袴 #Kyoto #京都
The next morning the villagers found a beautiful flower where the woman had last been seen.
As the petals were the same colour as her purple hakama, they concluded she was the spirit of the unknown flower and named it 'fujibakama' (藤袴).
#folklore #thoroughwort #Japan #藤袴
In the Kokin Eiga-shō (古今栄雅抄) Asukai Masachika (飛鳥井雅親 1417-91) describes the romantic origins of fujibakama...
One rainy autumn evening a beautiful woman was seen by villagers wandering in the fields above their farms, weeping sadly.
She appeared to them otherworldly.
Because of their fragrance, fujibakama are also known as 'orchid' (蘭), 'fragrant grass' (香草) and 'dream flower' (夢花).
Heian noble women would often add powdered fujibakama to their baths.
At Fujibakama-en (フジバカマ園) it was possible to collect bags of the dried plant✨👃
A few Falls ago we asked Nona (のな) to craft a special sweet inspired by one of the '7 Flowers of Autumn' (秋の七草)...this was the result🙌
'Kaori-gusa' (香り草 'fragrant grass') is another name for fujibakama (藤袴), which has a smell similar to sakura mochi (桜餅) when dried.
💜FIELDS OF FUJIBAKAMA🌿
Each year a parcel of meadow in Ōharano (大原野), to the south west of the city, is transformed into an oasis of thoroughwort. 'Fujibakama-en' (フジバカマ園) is one of the best places in Kyōto to catch sight of this endangered flower 'in the wild'.
There may be a rather mundane reason for people believing butterflies transported souls to the netherworld.
It was noted that butterflies would collect on dead bodies left exposed in the crematory grounds, sapping on decaying corpses...thus they became linked to the afterlife.
Adding more horror into the mix, imaginations fired by ghost stories such as 'Banchō Sarayashiki' (番町皿屋敷), the pupae of this same butterfly was likened to a bound woman😣
In 1795 there was an infestation of byasa alcinous, a butterfly larvae that enjoyed cool, dark spaces. Old wells in Japan, filled with their cobweb-like threads, had people fearing the spirit of Okiku (お菊 - a young women tossed down a well only to become a ghost) had returned.
Intriguingly butterflies don't feature in Japan's ancient records or the Man'yōshū (万葉集 - Japan's oldest collection of poems).
In 1247 a swarm of yellow butterflies in Kamakura (seat of the shōgunate) was taken as an inauspicious omen (the Miura rebellion broke out soon after).