Tools for Hitotema | Three Snow 09.19 – 09.20.26

Hands-on demonstrations & tastings

September 19 – 20
11AM – 5PM
Window A, JAPAN HOUSE Los Angeles

For one weekend, Three Snow comes to WAZA from Tsubame-Sanjo—with a kettle, a tray of strainers, and an argument about one small step.

Hitotema

Hitotema is the extra bit of care that a dish does not strictly require. Sifting the matcha before you whisk it. Straining the leaves out of the pot. It takes ten seconds, it is the first thing people drop, and it is the difference between a cup you finish and one you do not.

Three Snow has spent sixty years making the tools for that step. The company has worked in Tsubame-Sanjo, Niigata—where Japan makes its metal—since 1963, and for its first three decades made almost nothing for the home: its customers were professional kitchens, and its products were the ones cooks reach for without looking. Strain, skim, drain, fry. A strainer used two hundred times a day either holds its shape or it is replaced.

What is happening that weekend

Taste the difference. We will brew leaf tea through the Three Snow tea strainer set so you can taste what a finer mesh does—no small leaves in the cup, and a cleaner, less bitter tea.

Sift it yourself. Two matcha strainers side by side, one with the special surface treatment and one without, so you can feel why powder moves through one and clings to the other. Sifted matcha whisks smoother and drinks creamier—that is the whole case for hitotema in one bowl.

Watch the cups change. Pour cold water into a MADOROMU sake cup and the artwork appears as the copper takes the temperature. Six designs, drawn from the seasons.

Meet the maker

Shizuku Ishijima of Shinetsu Works is traveling from Niigata for both days. Ask her anything—how the mesh is woven, why a zaru is shaped the way it is, what the company’s own kitchen uses.

Free, both days, no reservation needed.

Shop Three Snow Tea Tools Show Three Snow MADOROMU sake cups