Alum Yufuko Kurioka Brings All Things Tea to Public, One Cup at a Time

EAST BAY TIMES -- Kurioka first came to the United States in 2000 at the request of a friend, a professor at Whitman College in Washington state, to teach the tea ceremony. “People there had never seen a tea ceremony, never heard of it,” she said, and the experience fueled her interest in teaching the ceremony.

She went back to Japan and returned in 2001 as a student at San Francisco State University, where she again held tea events — at the request of her teachers — as part of the college’s cultural days. After graduating, she worked for the Buddhist Churches of America’s Institute for Buddhist Studies at the Jodo Shinshu Center in downtown Berkeley.