Museum admission not included
The design principle
Place, person, product.
Authenticity is where they meet.
Anyone can teach you to shape sugar and bean paste. Almost nowhere can you do it in a room like this one.
Place
Kujo-kan is a wooden building standing in the museum garden, and it is not open to the public. Visitors walk past it. For these sessions the doors open, and the workshop takes place inside — a setting that exists nowhere else.
Person
Your instructor is a wagashi professional who has spent years explaining Japanese culture to guests in English. The reasoning behind each shape reaches you directly, not through a translator.
Product
Nerikiri appeared in the Edo period, made for the tea ceremony. Chrysanthemum, plum, wisteria — the flowers are how the seasons are spoken about in Japanese art, and nerikiri is one of the traditional forms that language takes.
Context
Any one of these on its own is ordinary. Together — this room, this teacher, this confection, on one afternoon — they make an hour spent inside Japanese culture rather than looking at it from outside.
The building
Kujo-kan.
The room began inside the grounds of the Kyoto Imperial Palace, as part of the residence of the Kujo family. It was later rebuilt at the family's ducal villa in Akasaka, and in 1934 came here, to the museum garden, given by Kujo Michihide.
The Kujo were kuge — court nobility, not samurai. For some six centuries theirs was one of five families from which the emperor's regents were chosen, and the culture they kept was a Kyoto culture of ceremony, poetry and the turning of the seasons rather than one of the sword. That is the world this room was built for.
It is not, strictly, a teahouse but a shoin-style reception room: two rooms of ten tatami mats with a veranda on every side. Above the doors, a transom cut from a single plank of Chinese quince into openwork wisteria lozenges. On the alcove panels, a landscape with pavilions attributed to the Kano school.
- Origin
- Kujo residence, Kyoto Imperial Palace grounds
- Relocated
- Kujo ducal villa, Akasaka → museum garden, 1934
- Structure
- Single-storey timber, hipped tile roof, 15m × 10m
- Rooms
- Two rooms of ten tatami, encircling veranda
- Alcove
- Landscape with pavilions, attributed to the Kano school
- Transom
- Openwork wisteria lozenges, single Chinese quince plank
The museum garden is open throughout the year, but its historic teahouses are closed to visitors. Entry to Kujo-kan is by reserved booking.
The plan
Four things you will do.
One seasonal nerikiri confection, made by your own hands, then tasted with matcha you whisk yourself — in the room where you made it. Sixty minutes, in English.
Make a nerikiri
Watching the instructor and her assistant work, you shape one seasonal confection yourself. The difficult moments are the ones they step in for — so the result is genuinely yours, and it holds together.
Watch a demonstration
The instructor shapes the season's design where you can see it, then prepares a bowl of matcha herself. Watching it done properly — and hearing why each step is what it is — is what makes your own turn work.
Whisk your own matcha
Then you do it. Everyone whisks their own bowl at their own seat, guided step by step. It is harder than it looks and easier than you fear.
Sit and taste it
Your own nerikiri, a dry sweet prepared by the instructor, and the matcha you whisked. This is the part the whole hour was built for.
If time allows
The instructor and her assistant may give a second demonstration, making a different kind of wagashi.
- A dry sweet (higashi) prepared by the instructor is served alongside your own confection.
- Seating is on cushions at low tables on tatami. If sitting on the floor is difficult, a chair can be arranged — just ask when booking.
The instructor
Momoko Sazawa.
Teaching wagashi in English since 2016, and leading this programme for manatea.
Momoko Sazawa grew up in Gifu and spent a year of high school in Wisconsin as an exchange student. It was from that distance — being asked about her own country by people who had never seen it — that Japanese culture became something she wanted to explain rather than simply live inside. At university she belonged to the tea ceremony club.
She leads these sessions herself, in English. Nothing is relayed through an interpreter — the reason behind each shape reaches you as she is shaping it.
In 2016 she opened her own school, Wagashi & Matcha Class sakura, in Sendagi, a little north of Ueno.
- Qualifications
- Chef (chorishi) · Food Education Instructor · Food Life Adviser
- Press
- Malaysian national television, a feature on cherry-blossom wagashi · Asahi Shimbun · Metropolis
- Also teaches for
- City governments, consumer co-operatives, Girl Scouts and other organisations
She has taught by invitation at public cultural venues, including the tea room Zenso-an at Soka City Culture Hall, and has trained two certified instructors of her own — one of whom now runs a wagashi school in The Hague.
In their own words
Guests from the last session.
A small group, twice a day, in a room most visitors only see from the garden path.
It was my first time having matcha, and I learned a lot about it today… Definitely recommend it.
A guest from the July session
A very nice experience, and worth doing it. It’s a quiet place, and the practice is really nice. I was very happy.
A guest from the July session
Who this is for
For guests who want to meet Japanese culture through place, material and their own hands.
Whether you are in Japan for a week or you live here.
A cultural activity with depth
Every gesture, material and story is there to open up the quieter side of Japanese culture — not to fill an hour.
Small and attentive
Twelve guests at most, with an instructor and an assistant, so nobody works alone.
Inside the museum
The session sits in the garden of a national museum, in a building visitors walk past but do not enter — a few minutes from the galleries.
Booking
Available sessions
60 minutes / English / up to 12 guests
JPY 15,000 per person
Museum admission not included
- Free to cancel until the day before. A cancellation fee applies only on the day itself.
- The session runs from a single booking — you will not be cancelled for want of a group.
- Booking is handled by Activity Japan, in English.
Details
Before joining
- Venue
- Kujo-kan, in the garden of the Tokyo National Museum, Ueno, Tokyo
- Language
- English
- Age
- Ages 10 to 80
- Main audience
- International guests interested in Japanese traditional culture, craft, art and history
- Check-in
- Please arrive at Kujo-kan 15 minutes before your session begins
- Late arrival
- Guests arriving after the session has begun may not be able to join
- Seating
- On cushions at low tables on tatami. If sitting on the floor is difficult, a chair can be arranged — please ask when booking
- To take home
- Your confection is eaten during the session, with the matcha you whisk. Nothing travels home in a box
- Ingredients
- Nerikiri: white kidney bean, sugar, agar, glutinous rice flour, starch syrup (sweet potato), natural colouring (gardenia, beetroot). Dry sweet: wasanbon sugar, powdered sugar, colouring (Red No.102)
- Allergies
- Please tell us of any dietary requirements when booking
- Museum admission
- Not included in the session fee. Please pay at the museum entrance
- Booking
- Please use the booking link shown for each session
- Cancellation
- Free until the day before. A 100% fee applies for same-day cancellation or no-show
- Notes
- The session is cancelled if the museum is closed. Schedule and operating details may change depending on museum conditions