Since last year, most of my tea drinking has happened at the office.
This is where I spend most of my time.
In this post, I’ll describe my morning tea routine during the weekdays.
It’s not the same each weekend so I’ll leave that part out.
I get out of bed at 5:30 am, and make breakfast for my daughter.
Meanwhile, my wife wakes her up and helps her get ready before the school bus comes.
My daughter leaves at 6:20 am.
At that time I’m not hungry nor thirsty, just sleepy.
So I actually go to bed again, until 7 am 🙂
After waking up for the second time, I have a light breakfast without tea nor coffee.
I may drink a bit of orange juice.
Then I walk to the office. It’s about 20 minutes away from my home.
I usually listen to podcasts in Japanese while I walk. The idea is to avoid forgetting the language, because I don’t really get to speak it much.
Before 8 am, I’m already at the office. This is when I get ready to drink tea.
The first thing is to heat the water. I use my Zojirushi water boiler for that.
It holds 4 liters (135 oz) of water.
Work officially starts at 9, but since I always have things to take care of before that, I begin working at 8:30 am.
That means that I have half an hour to enjoy tea without being busy.
But I don’t focus on the tea exclusively, unfortunately.
It’s basically a time where I gather my thoughts. However, I wouldn’t call it a moment of mindfulness.
I like to drink tea in small cups. 60 ml (2 oz) or less.
Besides that, I use a small kyusu. Its capacity is just 160 ml (5.3 oz).
There’s a 90% chance that my first tea of the day will be a green tea. And out of that, 80% would be sencha.
That doesn’t mean that I won’t be drinking different kinds of tea during the day.
But I just start with a sencha out of habit.
Besides the taste, I enjoy smelling the wet tea leaves.
It gives me much pleasure.
I’ll do all of the possible infusions of a given tea.
The last infusion will be 10 seconds or less in boiling water.
As soon as I finish my first tea, I’ll prepare a different one.
I’ll drink at least two teas each morning.
As long as I’m at the office (which isn’t always the case because I have to leave the office at least twice a day), I’ll continue to drink tea throughout the day.
But I can’t give you a detailed description because it isn’t the same each time.
Once I’m back home, it’s too late for me to drink more tea.
I may have trouble sleeping because of the caffeine.
But I’ll drink a last one if I have a pending tea review.
I usually review teas at night because that’s when I have the most free time.
Nevertheless, I consider my first tea in the morning to be the most important.
It sets the tone for the rest of the day.
If for some reason I don’t start drinking tea when I get to the office, the day will become much more stressful and hectic.
