Tea, Words & Tools
主菓子と干菓子・おもがしとひがし
Omogashi & Higashi
At a tea gathering: omogashi for thick tea, higashi for thin tea.
In the way of tea, the sweet is eaten before the tea. At a formal tea gathering (chaji), the sweet served after the kaiseki meal is the omogashi (main sweet), and the one that accompanies the thin tea is the higashi (dry sweet).
Omogashi are moist, satisfying fresh sweets such as nerikiri, konashi, kinton and joyo manju. Higashi are light sweets with little moisture — rakugan, wasanbon, aruheito (pulled sugar candy), senbei — and two or three kinds are arranged together on a tray.
Both are there so that the tea can be enjoyed at its best. When you take the tea while the sweetness still lingers in your mouth, the umami of the tea stands out all the more.
