Dr Yukio Kondo, a great Temomicha master

[fortunato]

Hello,

It is really difficult to understand the process for 手もみ茶 = Temomicha = hand rubbing tea, fortunately I found a youtube.com video with a famous Temomicha master Dr Yukio Kondo :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k3sfYRqGcQ

An extract from a Japanese Food TV show !

[Tead Off]

How he goes from picking the leaves to the finished product is magical. Who would ever think you can get such big, dark, needles out of manhandling the tea like he does. Absolutely fascinating.

[thirtysixbelow]

This is amazing. I saw him handling these leaves wondering what was going on. Then at the very end when he pulls it apart exposing all of those needles ... crazy. The thing that I don't get is how the hand rolled tea is yellow-orange compared to machine rolled tea which is the usual green.

This does make me have an appreciation for the people who do this, from the ones out there picking the leaves to the ones processing it. I hope throughout my lifetime this art isn't lost causing everything to be automated without care. The thread about Hon Yama Hebizuka shows that apparently things have already started to be lost.

[ummaya]

fortunato,

I just ended to watch the amazing movie a few minutes ago and my immediate reflex was to rush to the kitchen and prepare a good cup of sencha.

Thank you very much for the link.

[Robert Fornell]

Thank you for posting this link.

I loved it when he said that when I'm 90 I hope that there is someone I can learn more about temomicha from.

Beautiful spirit!
R

[Domn]

Very interesting!
Is there any way to buy such hand rolled tea?

[Robert Fornell]

Is there any way to buy such hand rolled tea?

A search off Yahoo Japan, see link below, returned any number however of sites however most I looked at were tailored to domestic sales.....
If there are a number of interested folks here, I may be able to put together a group order via my contacts there.

http://x.search.yahoo.co.jp/search?p=%E ... top_ga1_sa

Cheers,
R

[fortunato]

I'm glad that you all watched the video, because Dr Yukio Kondo is great and as Ronin Ceramurai said, he has a beautiful spirit...

Unfortunately it is quite impossible to buy his Temomicha.

It could be possible to have Saitama Temomicha but I should ask to a specialist that I know if it's possible for him to send to overseas and he also has different kind of Temomicha that they won different kind of prizes from Saitama, Uji and Shizuoka !

Temomicha is very expensive and you can order only a few 3 gramms packages !

@ Ronin Ceramurai :

I already ordered Makinouen Temomicha http://www.makinouen.co.jp/temomicha.html leaves are clean with a good fresh aroma but leak of flavor tho...

[Tea and coffee]

Neat,
I tried looking at the sites but no English avail at all
Me only speak Englese and Francais!

But from my clicking of stuff I see that 9 grams is like 2,500 yen?
so around $28 us?

eeeekkkk!

still I have to try some sometime or at least once.

Well, I have enough Chinese tea to keep me busy though...just got my order of 2 white tea and 3 different green teas