By Ruth SOWBY

For the seventh consecutive year, at a cost of $20 per ticket, visitors were able to sample teas at the Pasadena Tea Festival held on April 12 at Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden. Local tea vendors at the festival specialized in a wide variety of Japanese, Chinese and Korean teas. Sprinkled throughout the garden were women dressed in traditional Asian garb.  

Garden creative director and festival co-organizer Meher McArthur greeted guests at the registration desk at the front of the garden. McArthur, a Japanese art historian, answered questions from visitors.       

A highlight of the festival was a traditional Japanese Tea Ceremony, held several times during the day. While visitors lined up waiting to be invited in, Mikko Nakatomi demonstrated the ritualized purifying of hands at a stone basin (tsukubai). Once guests were seated inside the tea house, a tea hostess used prescribed gestures and utensils in front of her seated audience to meticulously prepare the tea. At the end of the ceremony guests enjoyed a bowl of macha, a powdered green tea that is whipped up with a whisk in a tea bowl. 

According to Nakatomi, “The practice of tea drinking offers a sense of community and camaraderie.”    

New Pasadena residents Sandra Padilla and daughter Susana planned to visit the garden and thought the festival would give them a good opportunity. West Los Angeles resident Rhiannon Geving appreciated the “different teas from different areas.”