Rice balls with Adzuki Beans

In Kyoto’s Gion dis­trict, near Shim­bashi street on the there is a red bridge which is a well known spot for catch­ing a glimpse of a pass­ing Maiko and for see­ing pho­tog­ra­phers tak­ing pic­tures of both Maikos, mod­els, and those try­ing to look like mod­els. Directly across from the bridge you will find one of Kyoto’s most famous tea houses — Gion Kamori.
 

Gion-Komori

61 Motoyoshi-cho, Gion Shim­bashi
Higashiyama-ku; (075) 561‑0504

Use the north-side of red bridge as your ref­er­ence, then look for a sign-on a stand in front of a machiya style build­ing. Note that there is no sign out front and non-Japanese read­ers could walk up and down the street a few times before find­ing the tea house. How­ever once inside you will find that Gion Kamori is wel­com­ing to foreigners. Here you will find tra­di­tional Japan­ese sweets like sweet rice balls and yat­suhashi along side of new ones like green tea ice cream or par­faits. The tea house also serves tra­di­tional Japan­ese teas like sen­cha, macha, and oolong. When vis­it­ing opt for table near the inside gar­den. The seat­ing is tra­di­tional Japanese style ( low table and sit­ting on the floor on a tatami mat); try to get a table close to the to small gar­den out­side; it is very relax­ing. Kyoto can be very cold in the win­ter and very humid and hot in the sum­mer. A cold macha iced tea with a cold dessert helps the day go bet­ter. In win­ter opt for a hot tea. I use the term dessert loosely since in Japan you can expect to always receive a small sweet when order­ing tea. On a diet? — no prob­lem, you’ve already noticed that you are walk­ing more here than in Tokyo. Note that if you are obvi­ously not Japan­ese, the wait­ress may offer you some­thing safe.. this is being done out of polite­ness. how­ever, if you want more than ice creamor sweet rice balls, just ask for a menu. Say “menu please” or in Japan­ese “menu o kudasai”.

Entrance to Gion-Komori

Of the 3 teas I men­tioned, macha is the least known in the States. Macha is a finely pow­dered green tea. It is whisked by hand using a chasen (tea whisk) with hot water. In Kyoto I learned that there are many grades of macha. The bet­ter qual­ity ones are sweet and creamy. I spent some time vis­it­ing with Horaido-san at this tea shop in Kyoto’s Ter­mi­machi dis­trict. Here is a good link to learn more abut Japan­ese green tea Horaido Tea Shop. There are many books on how to make macha, but I enjoyed get­ting the first hand details from Horaido-san him­self. When enter­ing his store in Ter­i­machi you get a sense for what the area looked like 100 years ago. Many of the the sur­round­ing stores were built recently, but if you close your eyes you can pic­ture this team shop’s being there long before there was elec­tric­ity. In fact it was built in 1803. I learned that there are over a dozen vari­eties of macha avail­able. The cheaper ones are more bit­ter and have an astrin­gent qual­ity. I had the plea­sure of try­ing some “Miyako-no-shiro” which is one of the high­est grades of macha. It was smelled fan­tas­tic, and hot a top cream that made me feel like I was eat­ing whip cream.

Macha Green Tea

Mike meets Horaido-san in Terimachi

The per­fect snack for you macha or sen­cha is yat­suhashi. It’s a rice flour snack often flavoured with cin­na­mon. Fresh Yat­suhashi does not last long so most vis­i­tors to Japan or a Japan­ese air­port will be famil­iar with the cookie ver­sion. Both are made from a thin sheet of rice flour. The fresh kind is stuffed with sweet potato, yuba, or mung beans. The dry kind is more akin to a cookie and is often cov­ered with dif­fer­ent choco­late flavours like green tea, straw­berry, or or milk choco­late. Since nei­ther the fresh or cookie type is very sweet they will go well with a cup of hot tea.

Young Girls in front of Gion Kamori