Zen And The Art Of Japanese Tea Robots

In Japan, tea ceremony (cha-dou) is revered as a way to a gain deeper insights into life and philosophy. Traditional Japanese tea ceremony practitioners put in long hours to master the intricacies and details of pouring tea. The road to becoming a tea master is crucial as it develops the practitioner’s mental state as well as physical technique.

However if you don’t have time to master the “way of tea”, then you can build a bot and automate your zen experience. That’s exactly what the people at Ano Labs did when they built their Japanese Tea Ceremony Robot #151A.

The Japanese hacking scene is really interesting because there’s an aesthetic to creating very technical things that perform tasks that aren’t particularly useful. Another example would be this Lego Bubble Wrap Popper:

10 thoughts on “Zen And The Art Of Japanese Tea Robots

  1. I beg to differ, and think that “Bubble Wrap Popper machines ARE particularly useful”.
    Because one day or another you need to dispose of bubble wrap… and then is the bubbles are popped you do not waste as much space in your trash bin. Considering that in some town you need to pay for every bag of trash you dump, this could be a huge advantage in having such a machine.

    Regarding the tea making contraption… I not so sure yet

  2. I’ve seen the Japanese Tea Ceremony before. This is the first time to see the tea beaten to frothy bubble hell. Disrespect for fine caffeine. No elegance and nothing meditative. Now the LEGO bubble wrap sequential popper had those qualities but is somehow deemed useless.

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