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radhardenedMay 3 (Constitution Memorial Day)
Last Tuesday was the start of our Golden Week holidays. In the morning I puttered around my room, did laundry, and assembled the wire shelf unit I had delivered from the department store. In the evening I headed to Anna's for a few days of curfew-free gallivanting. We walked over to nearby Fujinomori-jinja, where a festival was taking place, and we were just in time to see a mikoshi being carried down the street to the shrine. We enjoyed the festival food: I got a grilled corn cob, Anna got karaage and oden and caramel-filled taiyaki, and we each downed a cheap little jar of sake while chatting with friendly locals who were (unsurprisingly) less involved in traditional Japanese culture than we are.
May 4 (Greenery Day)
The next day, after a breakfast platter of Anna's homemade buckwheat hotcakes, we went to Uji for some sightseeing. We each had a bowl of usucha and a wonderful nerikiri ao-ume sweet at Taiho-an, the city's municipal tea house. We briefly visited Ujigami-jinja and Uji-jinja. We went to the Tale of Genji Museum and I felt thoroughly ashamed for not (yet!) having read the famous novel, something I intend to remedy soon. We walked up a scenic tree-lined path to Kōshō-ji, which turned out to be closed. A cone of matcha soft-serve with extra matcha sifted on top and some hanging out on the river bank later, we headed to Kyoto to temper all that serenity with some electronically-mediated overstimulation at Teramachi's ROUND ONE entertainment complex. We headed up to the karaoke floor and booked a room and two hours' worth of nomihodai (all-you-can-drink) service, which—speaking for myself—made it a little less intimidating to do karaoke with a professional opera singer. They had a good selection of food to share, and their yuzu gin and tonic was refreshingly tasty. The time flew by. Afterward, on the ground-floor UFO catcher level, I scored a couple of plush nemuneko on my second hundred-yen try. Ahhh! So cute!
May 5 (Children's Day)
On Thurday, we spent most of the day sleeping in, reading, and poring over a Chinese-language printout that goes through the enumerative combinatorics of genji-mon. I think. Eventually we went out and rode the train a short way to Momoyama to stroll the shopping area there and look for sandals, now that the weather was getting warmer. I succeeded, and I also picked up a set of Ogura Hyakunin Isshu cards, which I intend to go through and understand (likely with the aid of a book like One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each for translation and context) before the New Year. We'll see. Anna cooked up a delicious dinner, and alas, my holiday was over; it was back to the dorm in time for curfew.
May 6
On Friday morning we had jitsugi instead of lectures because we would be attending the upperclass Gakuensei's welcome chakai in the afternoon, and apparently jitsugi takes priority over lectures when there's only time for one. Since other students use the first-floor Gakuen practice rooms in the morning, we used some of the space in the vast third-floor area, like we had on Monday except this time we were sharing the space and its preparation area with a couple of other classes. The preparation area was a nexus of confusion over what things were ours versus theirs. With the sun streaming in through the south-facing windows, it was unpleasantly hot and bright. Imagawa-sensei had a lot of suggestions/critiques on our hishaku handling, not all of which I understood. We used a 雲龍釜 tsutsugama with a lid knob that was so difficult to grasp that it landed in the ash formation during a classmate's temae. Oops. One of the Rikyu-gata natsume we were using had a mismatched lid. It was just that kind of day. The omogashi was yama-fuji (mountain wisteria) from Oimatsu, and from witnessing their delivery to Gakuen and the mizuya-cho's deliberation about their name, I wonder whether the cho invents the names of the omogashi or his job is to ascertain the pre-existing name (which apparently isn't offered by the maker). Hmmm. I'll have to ask around.
As mentioned earlier, in the afternoon we (not only Midorikai but also the newer Gakuensei and shorter-term students and new Urasenke employees) attended a welcome chakai hosted by the upperclass Gakuensei. This was held on the bottom floor of Gakuen, where rooms 5 and 6 (the least formal) served as a large machiai. In one tokonoma were some chakai notebooks from previous entering classes (apparently we are the 50th!) with a poignant scattering of sakura. The scroll in that alcove was one of the few recognizable to me: 関 (barrier), which I own as a tanzaku back in the States. I don't remember the full phrase on the scroll in the other tokonoma, but I seem to recall it started with 千年 or 千歳. Whereas back home we would serve the guests kōsen (warm water infused with something seasonal and/or aromatic, like sakura or seasonal herbs) in the waiting area, here the guests are simply served warm water, so that is what we drank in the machiai.
Proceeding to the honseki in rooms 1 and 2 (the most formal), the tokonoma contained cheerful yellow yamabuki, a red incense container carved in the shape of a carp (appropriate both because of the just-past Children's Day and because of its association with striving), and a scroll reading 一華開五葉 結果自然成, if I recall correctly. The okashi was kusamochi made by the hosts with yomogi they had picked at Kyōto Gyoen. They performed usucha temae with a tana with which I'm not familiar. The mizusashi had a bamboo design, and the wooden hiranatsume had a gold paulownia design. I don't remember the first chawan, but the second chawan was sōmayaki which is memorable to me because it's from Fukushima Prefecture. For me, though, the highlight among the utensils was a chashaku carved by one of the upperclass Gakuensei from a trimmed branch of the sakura tree right outside Gakuen.
After tea we had a tenshinseki in rooms 3 and 4, but I won't go into detail on the food; suffice it to say that it was good and symbolic in ways that Hamana-sensei explained to us briefly afterward but which I don't remember.
May 7
On Saturday, I did a little catching up on e-mail and feed reading. Later June and I practiced hakobi usucha in the second-floor practice area at our dorm, the first time we've used it so far. Between the musty air and the loud squeal coming from some equipment outside the room, it's not a place I want to hang out any longer than necessary. We each practiced one round of hakobi usucha before wrapping it up and getting to Kitayama just before they closed to buy an inexpensive mizusashi, kensui, and take futaoki for practice. I also happened to see an awesome Kyōyaki hirajawan painted with a nature scene with jumping ayu, and I had to have it. We offset our purchases with a cheap dinner at a kaiten-zushi place where I'm happy I can get salmon/cream cheese makizushi.
May 8
On Sunday we headed over to the men's dorm to practice hakobi usucha some more in a storage room that they set up as a practice area. It was a bit cramped, but the atmosphere was convivial with more of our classmates around and some wagashi and tea to share. After practice I biked over to the department store that I seem to find a reason to visit every weekend; this time I was in search of pins for a sewing project I worked on later that evening, but I also got a hanging plant and a floor pad for under my room's low table, which has already made lounging around here more comfortable.
May 9
This morning's first lecture was by Gary-sensei on the general order of activity in a chaji 茶事, supplemented with beautiful photos from the book 茶の美. The lecture that followed, by Tanihata-sensei on Japanese tea culture in the Kamakura and Muromachi eras, happened to include a description of tōcha 闘茶, a kind of tea event of that time with clear similarities to modern chaji. Tanihata-sensei also explained what historians know about tea culture from that time based on the cargo from a recently-discovered shipwreck of a Japan-bound vessel from 1323. Apparently it was not unusual in those days for a Japanese temple or shrine to raise money by coordinating a sail from China (with a possible stop in Korea for celadon) to import tons of highly-valued utensils.
Today's afternoon jitsugi was again with Imagawa-sensei and again was hakobi usucha, this time with haiken. Even though today was the warmest, most humid day yet this season, I was happy to be back in the first-floor Gakuen tea rooms, and it was nice to feel the occasional breeze through the open doors. I used hibashi (large metal chopsticks for handling charcoal) for the first time today! Not as part of a sumi temae but rather in my role as one of the fire setup people. I used them to rotate the shitabi as we started them burning before jitsugi and to remove charcoal from the braziers after jitsugi. They require some finger/hand strength, for sure. A notable utensil we used today was a Tantansai-gonomi kiku karakusa kuro oonatsume. Perhaps more interesting to my readers, though, was today's omogashi, which was chimaki, an item I've been curious to try ever since I learned about them in our seasonal topics lecture for May (at which point I started noticing them over virtually ever doorway around here), but which I hadn't bought because of their relatively high price for omogashi. Reportedly the school paid 800 yen each for the ones for today's jitsugi. They're nontrivial to unwrap, so in our class for each temae the guest would start unwrapping practically as soon as the temae had begun. The mochi inside was interesting, and not bad, but overall the experience isn't worth 800 yen to me.
After today's jitsugi we new Midorikai students headed over to the Urasenke Center to accept our scholarship kimono (plus obi and nagajuban). As I wrote a month ago,
Last Tuesday was the start of our Golden Week holidays. In the morning I puttered around my room, did laundry, and assembled the wire shelf unit I had delivered from the department store. In the evening I headed to Anna's for a few days of curfew-free gallivanting. We walked over to nearby Fujinomori-jinja, where a festival was taking place, and we were just in time to see a mikoshi being carried down the street to the shrine. We enjoyed the festival food: I got a grilled corn cob, Anna got karaage and oden and caramel-filled taiyaki, and we each downed a cheap little jar of sake while chatting with friendly locals who were (unsurprisingly) less involved in traditional Japanese culture than we are.
May 4 (Greenery Day)
The next day, after a breakfast platter of Anna's homemade buckwheat hotcakes, we went to Uji for some sightseeing. We each had a bowl of usucha and a wonderful nerikiri ao-ume sweet at Taiho-an, the city's municipal tea house. We briefly visited Ujigami-jinja and Uji-jinja. We went to the Tale of Genji Museum and I felt thoroughly ashamed for not (yet!) having read the famous novel, something I intend to remedy soon. We walked up a scenic tree-lined path to Kōshō-ji, which turned out to be closed. A cone of matcha soft-serve with extra matcha sifted on top and some hanging out on the river bank later, we headed to Kyoto to temper all that serenity with some electronically-mediated overstimulation at Teramachi's ROUND ONE entertainment complex. We headed up to the karaoke floor and booked a room and two hours' worth of nomihodai (all-you-can-drink) service, which—speaking for myself—made it a little less intimidating to do karaoke with a professional opera singer. They had a good selection of food to share, and their yuzu gin and tonic was refreshingly tasty. The time flew by. Afterward, on the ground-floor UFO catcher level, I scored a couple of plush nemuneko on my second hundred-yen try. Ahhh! So cute!May 5 (Children's Day)
On Thurday, we spent most of the day sleeping in, reading, and poring over a Chinese-language printout that goes through the enumerative combinatorics of genji-mon. I think. Eventually we went out and rode the train a short way to Momoyama to stroll the shopping area there and look for sandals, now that the weather was getting warmer. I succeeded, and I also picked up a set of Ogura Hyakunin Isshu cards, which I intend to go through and understand (likely with the aid of a book like One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each for translation and context) before the New Year. We'll see. Anna cooked up a delicious dinner, and alas, my holiday was over; it was back to the dorm in time for curfew.
May 6
On Friday morning we had jitsugi instead of lectures because we would be attending the upperclass Gakuensei's welcome chakai in the afternoon, and apparently jitsugi takes priority over lectures when there's only time for one. Since other students use the first-floor Gakuen practice rooms in the morning, we used some of the space in the vast third-floor area, like we had on Monday except this time we were sharing the space and its preparation area with a couple of other classes. The preparation area was a nexus of confusion over what things were ours versus theirs. With the sun streaming in through the south-facing windows, it was unpleasantly hot and bright. Imagawa-sensei had a lot of suggestions/critiques on our hishaku handling, not all of which I understood. We used a 雲龍釜 tsutsugama with a lid knob that was so difficult to grasp that it landed in the ash formation during a classmate's temae. Oops. One of the Rikyu-gata natsume we were using had a mismatched lid. It was just that kind of day. The omogashi was yama-fuji (mountain wisteria) from Oimatsu, and from witnessing their delivery to Gakuen and the mizuya-cho's deliberation about their name, I wonder whether the cho invents the names of the omogashi or his job is to ascertain the pre-existing name (which apparently isn't offered by the maker). Hmmm. I'll have to ask around.
As mentioned earlier, in the afternoon we (not only Midorikai but also the newer Gakuensei and shorter-term students and new Urasenke employees) attended a welcome chakai hosted by the upperclass Gakuensei. This was held on the bottom floor of Gakuen, where rooms 5 and 6 (the least formal) served as a large machiai. In one tokonoma were some chakai notebooks from previous entering classes (apparently we are the 50th!) with a poignant scattering of sakura. The scroll in that alcove was one of the few recognizable to me: 関 (barrier), which I own as a tanzaku back in the States. I don't remember the full phrase on the scroll in the other tokonoma, but I seem to recall it started with 千年 or 千歳. Whereas back home we would serve the guests kōsen (warm water infused with something seasonal and/or aromatic, like sakura or seasonal herbs) in the waiting area, here the guests are simply served warm water, so that is what we drank in the machiai.
Proceeding to the honseki in rooms 1 and 2 (the most formal), the tokonoma contained cheerful yellow yamabuki, a red incense container carved in the shape of a carp (appropriate both because of the just-past Children's Day and because of its association with striving), and a scroll reading 一華開五葉 結果自然成, if I recall correctly. The okashi was kusamochi made by the hosts with yomogi they had picked at Kyōto Gyoen. They performed usucha temae with a tana with which I'm not familiar. The mizusashi had a bamboo design, and the wooden hiranatsume had a gold paulownia design. I don't remember the first chawan, but the second chawan was sōmayaki which is memorable to me because it's from Fukushima Prefecture. For me, though, the highlight among the utensils was a chashaku carved by one of the upperclass Gakuensei from a trimmed branch of the sakura tree right outside Gakuen.
After tea we had a tenshinseki in rooms 3 and 4, but I won't go into detail on the food; suffice it to say that it was good and symbolic in ways that Hamana-sensei explained to us briefly afterward but which I don't remember.
May 7
On Saturday, I did a little catching up on e-mail and feed reading. Later June and I practiced hakobi usucha in the second-floor practice area at our dorm, the first time we've used it so far. Between the musty air and the loud squeal coming from some equipment outside the room, it's not a place I want to hang out any longer than necessary. We each practiced one round of hakobi usucha before wrapping it up and getting to Kitayama just before they closed to buy an inexpensive mizusashi, kensui, and take futaoki for practice. I also happened to see an awesome Kyōyaki hirajawan painted with a nature scene with jumping ayu, and I had to have it. We offset our purchases with a cheap dinner at a kaiten-zushi place where I'm happy I can get salmon/cream cheese makizushi.
May 8
On Sunday we headed over to the men's dorm to practice hakobi usucha some more in a storage room that they set up as a practice area. It was a bit cramped, but the atmosphere was convivial with more of our classmates around and some wagashi and tea to share. After practice I biked over to the department store that I seem to find a reason to visit every weekend; this time I was in search of pins for a sewing project I worked on later that evening, but I also got a hanging plant and a floor pad for under my room's low table, which has already made lounging around here more comfortable.
May 9
This morning's first lecture was by Gary-sensei on the general order of activity in a chaji 茶事, supplemented with beautiful photos from the book 茶の美. The lecture that followed, by Tanihata-sensei on Japanese tea culture in the Kamakura and Muromachi eras, happened to include a description of tōcha 闘茶, a kind of tea event of that time with clear similarities to modern chaji. Tanihata-sensei also explained what historians know about tea culture from that time based on the cargo from a recently-discovered shipwreck of a Japan-bound vessel from 1323. Apparently it was not unusual in those days for a Japanese temple or shrine to raise money by coordinating a sail from China (with a possible stop in Korea for celadon) to import tons of highly-valued utensils.
Today's afternoon jitsugi was again with Imagawa-sensei and again was hakobi usucha, this time with haiken. Even though today was the warmest, most humid day yet this season, I was happy to be back in the first-floor Gakuen tea rooms, and it was nice to feel the occasional breeze through the open doors. I used hibashi (large metal chopsticks for handling charcoal) for the first time today! Not as part of a sumi temae but rather in my role as one of the fire setup people. I used them to rotate the shitabi as we started them burning before jitsugi and to remove charcoal from the braziers after jitsugi. They require some finger/hand strength, for sure. A notable utensil we used today was a Tantansai-gonomi kiku karakusa kuro oonatsume. Perhaps more interesting to my readers, though, was today's omogashi, which was chimaki, an item I've been curious to try ever since I learned about them in our seasonal topics lecture for May (at which point I started noticing them over virtually ever doorway around here), but which I hadn't bought because of their relatively high price for omogashi. Reportedly the school paid 800 yen each for the ones for today's jitsugi. They're nontrivial to unwrap, so in our class for each temae the guest would start unwrapping practically as soon as the temae had begun. The mochi inside was interesting, and not bad, but overall the experience isn't worth 800 yen to me.
After today's jitsugi we new Midorikai students headed over to the Urasenke Center to accept our scholarship kimono (plus obi and nagajuban). As I wrote a month ago, We had the option of adding a mon to the back of the kimono, which makes it suitable for formal occasions (of which I'll attend many over the next year, and not a few even after I return to the States, I expect) though that add-on isn't covered by the Midorikai scholarship. If you are Japanese you already have a designated mon from your family, but if you aren't, you get to choose one, an act of identity-expression that rivals choosing a name for yourself, if you ask me. The shopkeeper has a catalogue ofAnd there is mine, in the photo above or to the left, depending on where you're reading this. It's 北斗七星, a.k.a. the Big Dipper. What do you think? If you're curious, here are some of the other astronomical crests.hundreds of—probably over a thousand—around four thousand mon, and I'm afraid I tried my doukyuusei's patience in paging through the catalogue to choose one, but I eventually found one I think suits me well.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-09 03:56 pm (UTC)Huh; I looked at that mon and thought "draco". It didn't quite match, but seemed close enough with stylization... it's neat, regardless, and seems to fit you well.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-18 01:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-19 07:19 am (UTC)I suspect we all have different translations - mine is the Royall Tyler version - and that alone is worth fair comparison.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-10 09:45 pm (UTC)