Tea - without a ceremony

I believe English people love tea, and my wife who lived in England when she was young agrees on it. But she always laughs at me when I speak of the traditional brewing that I've read of. She tells me that she had seen no such thing as traditional English tea brewing. Yes, they like to drink cups of tea, but almost all of them use tea bags and hot water from electric kettles. No traditional leaf tea and tea spoon with kettle on the oven. Those are the illusions from centuries ago.

Japanese tea ceremony is known to the world, but almost nobody drinks tea with the famous tea ceremony today. Japanese people drink many cups of tea in a day. You simply put dried leaves of tea in a tea pot, then pour hot water. Nothing els. Just drink it whenever you feel thirsty. If you feel like, you can have a cup of strong tea with a small piece of sweets, like you do in a tea ceremony, but you don't turn the cup around, nor use small piece of cloth, fukusa. You can have tea while you are eating your dishes, while you are working, and even when you are walking. The tea itself is different from the powdered tea, matcha, used in tea ceremony. They are harvested, steamed, twisted, and dried. Not fermented like Indian tea or Chinese tea.

I have learned the basic of tea ceremony for half a year from an old master, then stopped as a beginner. There are many who can practice traditional tea ceremony, if you include a beginner like me. Maybe one out of ten or twenty Japanese knows how to perform a basic tea ceremony. The rest know about it as good as Americans know. Back in the 18th century, there was a joke about a retired merchant who wanted to perform a tea ceremony, but didn't know how. He put a spoonful of soap into the cup just to make it look like masters did.
In Japan, tea ceremony has been something a person should learn, but nobody wants to. Just like European classical music, most people have heard something about it, knows one or two master's name. But only a handful of people knows enough to perform it good.

So, when you go to Japan, and somebody asks you for a cup of tea, don't expect too much. He might be just asking if you are thirsty or not, or simply wants you to go inside a coffee shop with him. We drink tea without a ceremony. Many young people even don't use a tea pot. They simply buy a bottle of tea from an automatic vendor. Still, You can safely say that Japanese people love to have a cup of tea.