I am currently reading "The Old Tea Seller: Life and Zen Poetry in
18th Century Kyoto" by Baisao (the Tea Seller) and Norman Waddell (the
translator) and it is very good, I recommend it. The life story and
the poems of the Old Tea Seller would already make it worth reading
but in addition the notes at the end provide a lot of information on
the early history of Sencha (leaf tea) in Japan that I have not seen
before (not being a specialist, perhaps . . .). Published very
beautifully by Counterpoint, ISBN 1582434131 it might be worth noting
that Amazon.com are offering a much bigger discount than Barnes &
Noble . . . I wonder if anyone can say more about the early history of
Sencha and what is new in the information offered here?

On Jan 21, 8:16*pm, Brother Anthony > wrote:
> I am currently reading "The Old Tea Seller: Life and Zen Poetry in
> 18th Century Kyoto" by Baisao (the Tea Seller) and Norman Waddell (the
> translator) and it is very good, I recommend it. The life story and
> the poems of the Old Tea Seller would already make it worth reading
> but in addition the notes at the end provide a lot of information on
> the early history of Sencha (leaf tea) in Japan that I have not seen
> before (not being a specialist, perhaps . . .). Published very
> beautifully by Counterpoint, ISBN 1582434131 it might be worth noting
> that Amazon.com are offering a much bigger discount than Barnes &
> Noble . . . I wonder if anyone can say more about the early history of
> Sencha and what is new in the information offered here?

I've seen it before but have not read it, I just added it to my next
order so it will be a week or so before I get to it. I'm interested to
see what it has to say about Sencha, but even moreso I think it is
pretty neat that someone took the time to piece together all of the
info on "The Tea Seller." I look forward to it.

Sadly my wife (a teacher) brought home the "Zen Shorts" childrens
books for me to check out recently and I was never so disappointed and
appalled at an attempt to make Zen Koans/Taoist tales mainstream. They
are just butchered and retold in the most heavy handed and inelegant
way imaginable. Ugh. Yet it seems to be all the rage and earning
awards like they are going out of style. Hopefully this can cleanse my
mind from that debacle. Thanks for the heads up.

- Dominic

The book is really good. It contains lot of information that is very useful. I got this one and it helped lot of times to find some answer.

The same thread will do to announce the publication of an issue of
Kyoto Journal (number 71) devoted entirely to tea. As always, it is
visually stunning and extremely well produced. The editorial decisions
were entrusted to the Tea Arts Institute in California and the
contents are all very interesting, quite a few pieces being extracted
from recently published books. The only complaint we in Korea have (a
major one, of course) is that the said Institute has decided that
Korean tea is not worth mentioning, and duly does not mention it.
Lauren Deutsch's review of our book about the Korean Way of Tea is
included among the additional materials available online, but not in
the printed version. Ah well . . . at least a few poems I translated
got in, but they are not about tea!

See http://kyotojournal.org/kjcurrent/kjcurrent.html

It's definitely worth getting

I have one Korean tea called King Green which I posted about
previously. A nice issue worth tracking down. If you meet a tea
master on the road buy him a cup of coffee.

Jim

On Feb 10, 10:23 pm, Brother Anthony > wrote:
> The same thread will do to announce the publication of an issue of
> Kyoto Journal (number 71) devoted entirely to tea. As always, it is
> visually stunning and extremely well produced. The editorial decisions
> were entrusted to the Tea Arts Institute in California and the
> contents are all very interesting, quite a few pieces being extracted
> from recently published books. The only complaint we in Korea have (a
> major one, of course) is that the said Institute has decided that
> Korean tea is not worth mentioning, and duly does not mention it.
> Lauren Deutsch's review of our book about the Korean Way of Tea is
> included among the additional materials available online, but not in
> the printed version. Ah well . . . at least a few poems I translated
> got in, but they are not about tea!
>
> Seehttp://kyotojournal.org/kjcurrent/kjcurrent.html
>
> It's definitely worth getting