I started learning Japanese this year on a whim. I’d been thinking about matcha, looking up chawans on the internet, and decided, heck, why not? I’d love to visit Japan one day. So I dove in, downloading Duolingo, signing up for WaniKani, and practicing my hiragana and katakana on Tofugu. That’s how I normally decide to learn things– by throwing myself into the deep end. 

It’s also how I discovered tea. Sure, I’d been drinking tea bags here and there, but it was mostly to have something warm in my hands. Then, one slow day at work, a co-worker asked me if tea had more caffeine than coffee. A Google search and a few clicks later, I found myself reeling at the length of the “Tea” page on Wikipedia. My co-worker didn’t get an answer for a few hours as I scrolled through the Wiki and subsequent references and citations. By the end of our shift, I had an answer for my co-worker and a newfound interest in tea. 

Still, a few years passed, and I remained oblivious to anything but western brewing. I started drinking loose leaf– bought a new kettle and everything– but I didn’t delve outside my initial comfort zone. 

Until I started this blog. 

Like learning a new language, you don’t realize the scope of how much there is to learn until you break past the beginner stage. You dip your toe in, gain some confidence with the easy stuff– What is this? This is tea. Thank you. Where is the bathroom?– and then, suddenly, WHAM! The sentence “She drank tea today” asks you to start thinking about verb tenses and sentence structure. It was the same with tea. I sat there sipping from my second pot of an Earl Gray blend when I came across images of beautiful cups with lids, saucers, and tiny tea cups, all used in a way I’d never seen before. And that was only the beginning.

My deep dive into tea has lasted all year and will likely continue for years to come. Tea is multifaceted and encompasses a wide range of topics like culture, science, history, agriculture, taste– and, yes, language. In the course of all this studying, I’ve discovered that tea has its own sort of language. It’s a language that’s quiet, one that’s felt rather than heard; understood rather than explained. As the year comes to a close, I’d like to reflect not on all the facts and figures I learned in books and articles but instead on what tea has silently taught me throughout our sessions.

The first was methodology. Granted, much of this learning had to come from those books and articles. I couldn’t learn gongfu brewing by staring at my tea. But the small nuances between each method, the way different components interacted: that was all the tea. From my coastal water experiments to testing different brewing vessels, each affected how the tea tasted and asked me to stop, pay attention, and note the changes. The brewing methods, which I’m still gathering and learning, each brought out a different aspect of tea that I continue to learn from each day:

Western brewing teaches me community. 
Gongfu brewing teaches me evolution. 
Cold brewing teaches me patience. 
Grandpa-style brewing teaches me resilience.

Without learning about each of these methods, I wouldn’t have realized how versatile tea can be. Concrete knowledge got me to the sessions, but the tea pushed me to understand the complex interplay of knowledge and wisdom behind the way it’s brewed. Instructions and suggestions can only go so far. The practice itself brings understanding. 

With that understanding comes the realization that tea is meant to foster creativity. This next lesson was hard-won; my brain works in lists, instructions, and logic. Allowing myself to deviate from the methods I had learned was a challenge. It seems silly that, as someone with a love of writing and art, I struggle with creativity, but I do. Quite a bit. Letting loose, playing, and making executive decisions to throw the directions for brewing out the window all took an immense amount of practice. The results, though, are stellar. 

Through gaining knowledge through methodology, I found myself engaged in a state of play with any tea I brewed. Brewing instructions became starting points instead of rules set in stone. I brewed a yellow tea that, while I know it’s meant to be steeped around 170°F, tasted amazing with not-quite-boiling water. I found a sencha with an underwhelming hot brew but made such a stellar cold brew that I bought more. Each cup fostered creativity, bringing me to pick out leaves, examine them, and occasionally have a munch (I don’t recommend). I brewed a cup with a single leaf, for fun. I threw my most expensive tea into a mug grandpa style because, well, why not? Tea has an inherent playfulness as it swirls in our cups, buoyed by currents from the spout. If it can play, so should you.

The novelty this inventiveness brought to tea was my last lesson. Of all the lessons, this is the hardest for me to find words for. Novelty itself isn’t hard to describe. I could talk about the new flavors I found (did you know tea could taste like butter?) and how they broadened my palate, but it wouldn’t quite be what I meant. I could compare my first experience with what people call cha qi, the energy or lifeforce of tea, to finishing your favorite book for the first time; that heady feeling of my worldview has been irreparably altered. Neither of those examples can adequately describe the warmth, the relaxation, the quiet “newness” that tea has given me. I may have to investigate this strange novelty for many more years before I find the words to accurately pin it down. Or, maybe, it doesn’t want to be pinned. Maybe, I need to appreciate its beauty and existence as a nameless thing instead of something that can be classified. 

There’s still a lot for me to learn. Much like my Japanese language learning, I feel like a tea novice, able to string enough vocabulary and grammar together to make some simple conversation. A world of grammar, syntax, slang, and cultural nuances awaits me at the bottom of each cup. I hope you’ll continue to join me as I wade into the wide waters of tea. After all, language, adventures, and tea are all best shared with friends. Until next week, happy sipping!