Michigan Travel · Saginaw
Saginaw’s Japanese tea house marks 65 years with sister city Tokushima at a free Oct. 24 open house
SAGINAW, Mich. — Saginaw’s Japanese tea house will close out its season with a visit from its sister city’s tea masters.
The Urasenke Tankokai Tokushima Branch will give a chanoyu, or tea ceremony, presentation from 1:30 to 3 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24, at the Japanese Cultural Center, Tea House and Gardens, 527 Ezra Rust Drive, according to the center. Admission is free.
The open house celebrates 65 years of friendship between Tokushima, Japan, and Saginaw, the center’s flyer says. It will be held at Awa-Saginaw-An, the center’s tea house, and guests are invited to “share a bowl of tea.”
The timing matters for anyone who wants to see the gardens in fall color. The tea house and gardens are open noon to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday during the season, which ends Oct. 31, according to the center’s website.
The center does not go dark in winter. Public tea ceremonies are scheduled from 2 to 3 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 14, and Saturday, Dec. 12, and the center plans an evening open house from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 20, during Holidays in the Heart of the City, its calendar shows.
The center, which says it is dedicated “to promoting intercultural understanding and peace through a bowl of tea,” says donors to its capital campaign paid to rebuild its vermilion bridge and to restore the tea house with artisans from Japan. Its website says work has also begun on a new education building.
Questions about the open house can go to the center at 989-759-1648 or director@japaneseculturalcenter.org.
Sources:
Japanese Cultural Center, Tea House and Gardens of Saginaw, “Upcoming Events” (2026 calendar), https://www.japaneseculturalcenter.org/upcoming-events/
Japanese Cultural Center, flyer, “Open House: Chanoyu Presentation by Urasenke Tankokai Tokushima Branch,” Oct. 24, 2026, https://japaneseculturalcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Tokushima-Tea-Ceremony-10-24-2026.png
Japanese Cultural Center, home page (season hours and capital campaign), https://www.japaneseculturalcenter.org/
Photo: Holly Cheng, “Nakatani tea room, CSU Sacramento 06.JPG,” June 12, 2015, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/), cropped and color-adjusted; derivative under the same ShareAlike license, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nakatani_tea_room,_CSU_Sacramento_06.JPG
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