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After the various orientations and ceremonies mentioned in my previous post, classes began on Thursday. Our typical day involves two morning lectures, a quick lunch, then jitsugi (practicum) in the afternoon, followed by dinner and cleaning chores. Jitsugi is similar to what we call okeiko back home, but here we students are responsible for starting and maintaining the charcoal hearth, choosing a scroll and arranging the alcove flowers, arranging the okashi, and generally everything about the preparation and maintenance of the tea rooms in which we practice.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Thursday morning's first lecture was by Gary-sensei, a real character of a guy who came to Japan from Texas in the early years of Midorikai and never left. After enjoying his bowl of usucha with gusto, he imparted various bits of wisdom including "Never take notes in the tea room," "Do good; do not do evil," and "[In lectures] take notes: it makes you interested. Looking." In the second lecture Hamana-sensei talked about the history and arrangement of items in the mizuya. I took notes at a furious pace (and not for the sake of looking interested), since there was a lot of new vocabulary for me. After the lecture a fellow new student and I dashed to the cafeteria for lunch, not realizing that we had classroom-cleaning chores to complete before we could go to lunch. Oops. It didn't take long for our senpai to catch up with us at lunch and scold us.
In jitsugi we start with the very basics: how to bow, how to sit, how to walk, how to fill the mizusashi and natsume. How to enter and exit the tea room. Sitting seiza that afternoon wasn't much of a strain because of all the standing and walking we did and the merciful breaks that Hamana-sensei offered us. After class we went back to our dorms to change into samue and returned to Gakuen to clean; I swept and wiped around fifty tatami mats.
After dinner most of us Midorikai students went on an evening sakura-viewing outing at Maruyama Koen. It was awesome. The atmosphere was festive on a whole different level from hanami around the Tidal Basin in DC. Here are my photos, which are suspiciously missing any record of us sitting on one of the provided blue tarps with a spread of beer, sake, takoyaki, tsukune, and other goodies.
Friday morning's first lecture was by Mittwer-sensei on the administration and organization of Urasenke. Then she interpreted for us Tanihata-sensei's lecture on chado history, starting with Eisai's introduction of tea to Japan. Originally matcha was considered more medicinal than gustatory, a stimulant to keep meditating Buddhist monks awake. As the lecture progressed to Uji's tea heritage, we learned that it is essentially impossible to buy 100% Uji tea anymore, as the products labelled "Uji tea" are apparently blends of tea from various parts of Japan. Somewhere around lunchtime my folding fan seems to have fallen out of my pocket, leaving me near panic as jitsugi started; the folding fan is perhaps the most fundamental item a chado practitioner carries. I was expecting some reprimand for showing up without one, but Hamana-sensei was nonchalant about it and lent me his. Whew. Friday's warigeiko included how to retrieve (and return) a bowl of tea from the host, hanaire types, and kiyome. Like the other students, I had learned a slightly different way of purifying the chashaku, and I found that I really need to practice purifying a natsume. We attended a welcome dinner that evening at Art Grace Wedding Hills in their maison de champagne. It was an interesting kind of venue with its insistently Euro-elegance aesthetic. After a nice meal we stood up by groups (each class of the three-year program, Midorikai, graduate students, one-year-course participants) and introduced ourselves, and although we Midorikai students are not quite fluent in Japanese, we each managed a self-introduction without complete mortification. There was a brief after-party at the men's dorm, maybe the shortest party I've ever attended, since we women at least had to make it back to our own dorm by10 p.m. 9:45 p.m. I couldn't tell you what the men did after we left. :) (By way of explaining the curfew, Hamana-sensei told us that in Japan college students are not really considered adults yet, and indeed many or most of the first-year students are 18 years old, just out of high school.)
That brings us to today, which consisted mainly of buying things. First I went to Tankosha to buy the newly-published Urasenke Chado Textbook with my student discount. I peeked in the windows of Kitayama, where I wanted to buy the ash-forming tools we'll need next week and some practice utensils, but it was closed. I took the bus down to the vicinity of Shijō-dōri, where I admired the sakura and willow along Takasegawa and picked up a folding fan to replace my lost one, a large furoshiki for carrying stuff while I'm wearing kimono, a new nagajuban (underkimono), a nagoya obi to match the two awase komon kimono I brought, and a nemagi. Back in the neighborhood of my dorm I picked up some cute springtime chirashizushi for dinner and a potted Rosa banksiae to add some life to my drab concrete balcony.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Thursday morning's first lecture was by Gary-sensei, a real character of a guy who came to Japan from Texas in the early years of Midorikai and never left. After enjoying his bowl of usucha with gusto, he imparted various bits of wisdom including "Never take notes in the tea room," "Do good; do not do evil," and "[In lectures] take notes: it makes you interested. Looking." In the second lecture Hamana-sensei talked about the history and arrangement of items in the mizuya. I took notes at a furious pace (and not for the sake of looking interested), since there was a lot of new vocabulary for me. After the lecture a fellow new student and I dashed to the cafeteria for lunch, not realizing that we had classroom-cleaning chores to complete before we could go to lunch. Oops. It didn't take long for our senpai to catch up with us at lunch and scold us.
In jitsugi we start with the very basics: how to bow, how to sit, how to walk, how to fill the mizusashi and natsume. How to enter and exit the tea room. Sitting seiza that afternoon wasn't much of a strain because of all the standing and walking we did and the merciful breaks that Hamana-sensei offered us. After class we went back to our dorms to change into samue and returned to Gakuen to clean; I swept and wiped around fifty tatami mats.
After dinner most of us Midorikai students went on an evening sakura-viewing outing at Maruyama Koen. It was awesome. The atmosphere was festive on a whole different level from hanami around the Tidal Basin in DC. Here are my photos, which are suspiciously missing any record of us sitting on one of the provided blue tarps with a spread of beer, sake, takoyaki, tsukune, and other goodies.Friday morning's first lecture was by Mittwer-sensei on the administration and organization of Urasenke. Then she interpreted for us Tanihata-sensei's lecture on chado history, starting with Eisai's introduction of tea to Japan. Originally matcha was considered more medicinal than gustatory, a stimulant to keep meditating Buddhist monks awake. As the lecture progressed to Uji's tea heritage, we learned that it is essentially impossible to buy 100% Uji tea anymore, as the products labelled "Uji tea" are apparently blends of tea from various parts of Japan. Somewhere around lunchtime my folding fan seems to have fallen out of my pocket, leaving me near panic as jitsugi started; the folding fan is perhaps the most fundamental item a chado practitioner carries. I was expecting some reprimand for showing up without one, but Hamana-sensei was nonchalant about it and lent me his. Whew. Friday's warigeiko included how to retrieve (and return) a bowl of tea from the host, hanaire types, and kiyome. Like the other students, I had learned a slightly different way of purifying the chashaku, and I found that I really need to practice purifying a natsume. We attended a welcome dinner that evening at Art Grace Wedding Hills in their maison de champagne. It was an interesting kind of venue with its insistently Euro-elegance aesthetic. After a nice meal we stood up by groups (each class of the three-year program, Midorikai, graduate students, one-year-course participants) and introduced ourselves, and although we Midorikai students are not quite fluent in Japanese, we each managed a self-introduction without complete mortification. There was a brief after-party at the men's dorm, maybe the shortest party I've ever attended, since we women at least had to make it back to our own dorm by
That brings us to today, which consisted mainly of buying things. First I went to Tankosha to buy the newly-published Urasenke Chado Textbook with my student discount. I peeked in the windows of Kitayama, where I wanted to buy the ash-forming tools we'll need next week and some practice utensils, but it was closed. I took the bus down to the vicinity of Shijō-dōri, where I admired the sakura and willow along Takasegawa and picked up a folding fan to replace my lost one, a large furoshiki for carrying stuff while I'm wearing kimono, a new nagajuban (underkimono), a nagoya obi to match the two awase komon kimono I brought, and a nemagi. Back in the neighborhood of my dorm I picked up some cute springtime chirashizushi for dinner and a potted Rosa banksiae to add some life to my drab concrete balcony.
