Ceremony grade
Asahi Matcha朝日
First-flush Uji tencha, stone-milled at dawn on the day it is whisked. Served koicha-thick with a single chestnut wagashi from Wakasaya, two doors down since 1911.
Stillness, poured one bowl at a time.
Kurama Valley · Kyoto — Since 1932
Awai is a six-seat tea house and eight-room ryokan folded into the cedar slopes north of Kyoto. We practice a single art — the unhurried hour — and have refused to add a second one for ninety-four years.
1932Founded
8 roomsNever more
6 seatsPer ceremony
4 centuriesOf garden
一 The Philosophy
Ma — the fullness of
what is left out.
Every room at Awai is arranged around what is absent. One scroll in the tokonoma. One flower, cut before dawn. One bowl, passed with two hands. The emptiness is not decoration — it is the host.
Kanso · Simplicity
Nothing enters a room here without a reason to stay. Most things do not have one.
Seijaku · Stillness
We keep no clocks, no music, no screens. The kettle is the loudest voice in the house.
Shizen · Naturalness
The garden is raked daily and corrected never. What falls in autumn stays through autumn.
二 The Tea
Three teas. One season.
No menu beyond this.
Our tea master, Sōitsu Hara, selects each harvest in person and retires a tea the day it stops surprising him.
Two infusions
Saemidori Gyokuro玉露
Shaded twenty-four days under rice-straw, then brewed at 50°C for two patient minutes in Tokoname clay. The second infusion is quieter, and better.
Evening tea
Kuromatsu Hōjicha焙じ茶
Autumn bancha roasted over black-pine charcoal until the leaf smells of the mountain after rain. Poured after sunset only — it refuses to taste right earlier.
“A tea list should be short enough to hold in one breath.” — Sōitsu Hara, 12th tea master of Awai
Join a tasting →三 The Rooms
Eight rooms, each named
for what its window holds.
Corner room · Second floor
Tsuki, the Moon Room月
Ten mats above the moon-viewing platform, facing east where the valley opens. A hinoki soaking tub, futons of Ōmi linen, and no clock anywhere in the room. The moon does the timekeeping.
- 10 tatami
- Sleeps 2
- Hinoki bath
- Kaiseki breakfast
¥42,000per night · two guests
Garden room · Ground floor
Matsu, the Pine Room松
Eight mats behind a three-hundred-year-old pine that predates the house and, the gardeners insist, still outranks it. Private veranda over the raked garden; a cedar bath is drawn for you at dusk.
- 8 tatami
- Sleeps 2
- Private veranda
- Cedar bath at dusk
¥36,000per night · two guests
Summit room · Third floor
Kiri, the Mist Room霧
The highest room in the house. On autumn mornings the valley disappears entirely, torii and all — our guests report that this is precisely the point. By ten it returns, rinsed.
- 9 tatami
- Sleeps 2
- Writing desk
- Valley view, weather willing
¥38,000per night · two guests
Five further rooms — Yuki, Kaze, Hoshi, Take and Ishi — are shown only by correspondence.
Write to us →四 The Ceremony
Three seatings a day.
Six guests. Ninety minutes.
Held in the Tsuki-no-ma tea room by master Sōitsu Hara. Please arrive fifteen minutes early — we begin exactly on time, and always have.
07:00
Asa-cha朝茶
Koicha in the east room as first light crosses the garden wall.
¥6,500
4 seats left
11:30
Shōgo正午
Usucha with a seasonal kaiseki of nine small courses.
¥18,000
2 seats left
16:00
Yūgure夕暮れ
Hōjicha and sweets by charcoal light. The sitting ends in silence.
¥7,500
Join waitlist
House guests may reserve any seating at half rate. Children are welcome from twelve — the ceremony asks a stillness younger knees find unreasonable.
Request a seat“You do not so much drink the tea as arrive at it. Ninety minutes at Awai quietly undid three years of hurry.”Elena Laurent · Guest since 2019 — as told to The Slow Field Journal, No. 14