Japanese Tableware

The Japanese table has its own objects and each one has a reason. Sake is warmed in a jar before it is poured from a flask into cups too small to pour for yourself. Matcha is whisked in a bowl with eighty tines of bamboo until it foams. Lunch travels in a bent-wood box that keeps the rice from sweating. Tea is drunk from a tall cup with no handle, held in two hands. Five pieces here that cover that table: a stoneware sake set, a matcha set, a magewappa bento box, a chashaku scoop and a yunomi cup, and this page says what each is for and how to use it the Japanese way.

The sake set: flask, warming jar, six cups

The tokkuri is the narrow-necked flask sake is poured from; the ochoko are the small cups; the jar is what the flask stands in, filled with hot water, to warm the sake in winter. Ours is a cream speckled stoneware painted with a blue carp on every piece: a corked flask, the warming jar, six cups and a round tray. Fill the jar with hot water, stand the flask in it for a few minutes, and pour for a guest, who pours for you; nobody pours for themselves, which is the whole etiquette. Cold, the flask goes straight to the tray. Six cups is a table.

The matcha set, and the scoop

A chawan, the bowl, here with a small pouring lip so the tea can go into a cup or a latte; a chasen, the bamboo whisk cut from a single piece into eighty or so tines; a stoneware stand the whisk rests on upside down so the tines keep their curl; and a chashaku, the bamboo scoop, in black or in speckled white. A scoop and a half of powder, a splash of water just off the boil, and whisk in a fast zigzag until the surface foams. The chashaku alone, a single strip of bamboo bent at the tip over heat with the node left near the bend, in pale or smoked bamboo, is the scoop of the tea ceremony and, honestly, a good spoon for spices. The zabuton is what you sit on to drink it.

The bento box and the tea cup

The magewappa is the bent-wood lunch box of northern Japan: a thin board steamed and bent round an oval, stitched at the join, with a fitted lid and a black strap. The wood breathes, so the rice does not sweat, and it comes in a navy wave-print drawstring bag with a matching pouch of wooden chopsticks, a spoon and a fork. Pack it tight: rice on one side, three or four things on the other. The yunomi is the everyday tea cup, tall, handleless, held with one hand round the body and one under the base; ours is a deep blue-black glaze with a gold landscape painted round it, pines and hills or pines and a pavilion, and the landscape faces the person opposite, which is why it is on the outside.

Care

Stoneware takes a dishwasher; the cork stopper, the gold landscape on the yunomi and everything bamboo or wood do not. Rinse the whisk in warm water only and dry it on its stand, tines down. Wash the bento box by hand without soaking and dry it lid off; no dishwasher, no microwave. Wipe the chashaku dry, never wet it. Made to Japanese designs in Asia, in glazed stoneware, bamboo and bent wood as stated on each page.

Japanese tableware: the questions we are asked

How do I warm sake?

Fill the jar with hot water, stand the corked flask in it for three to five minutes, pour into the cups. For a guest first, then they pour for you.

Do I need the whisk stand?

Yes, if you want the whisk to last a year. Resting it tines-down on the stand keeps the curl; leaving it on its side collapses it in a month.

Can the bento box go in the microwave?

No. Bent wood and heat are a bad pair. Pack cold or room temperature, which is how bento are eaten.

Is the sake set dishwasher safe?

The stoneware, yes. The cork stopper, no; wash it by hand and let it dry before it goes back in the flask.