>>2838012I'm not an expert on Japanese but what I've gathered is that tea towel is a literal translation of 茶巾 (chakin) which is the cloth used to wipe the bowls during tea ceremonies. But in this case it's actually referring to those old pouches with the draw strings that people used to use. Apparently in old Japan those were commonly used for carrying gold dust so they were called gold dust bags, and the word for gold dust is 砂金 (shakin) which sounds like chakin and I guess over time people forgot where the name came from and the words got mixed up.
In English we'd call it a coin purse, but it's not a perfect translation because without context people are probably more likely to think of the modern kind of coin purse than the old timey kind. Also coin purse is slang for testicles in English.
