![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
April 10-14
Apr. 14th, 2011 06:56 pmI'm finding it's quite easy to get behind on posting blog updates and responding to e-mail when I'm not spending most of my day in front of a computer. Funny, that.
April 10
On Sunday we Midorikai students enjoyed complimentary tickets (courtesy of our school) to Miyako Odori at Gion Kobu Kaburenjo. They were front-row seats with a brief chanoyu temae beforehand (by local maiko) included. At the insistence of one of our senpai, we wore kimonos, which for us kohai was our first time putting them on largely by ourselves. Fellow kohai June and I needed some help from senpai Karoliina, but we managed it; I considered it a sort of dry run for getting dressed in kimono for class, which we're encouraged to do as soon as we collectively can.
Before coming here I'd assumed that geiko and maiko are given only cursory instruction in chanoyu and perform it in a sort of amateur way. But actually they practice their temae under our school's teachers, and my impression is that while they aren't practicing as intensively as we are, they probably do so more frequently and seriously than the once-a-week okeiko we have back home.
This pre-show temae was the kind with countless rows of guests, all but one or two of whom are served from tea whisked behind the scenes out of expediency. So it certainly didn't have any sort of intimate feeling to it, but it was fascinating to watch the maiko perform it. Here's a video of it (not taken by me). During the main attraction—i.e., the dance performance that followed—photography and videography were not allowed (so they could sell 600-yen program booklets with a paltry few photos of the performance). That hasn't stopped other people, though, thus the photo above and/or to the left, depending on the size of your browser window. The performance was enjoyable in a light, seasonal kind of way.
Afterward we made our way through the enormous crowds of sakura-season tourists along the narrow streets of Higashiyama, past the Rikiya Ryokan where I've stayed twice on previous trips to Kyoto, to a small restaurant that was open for service at the unorthodox hour of 15:30 or so. Sitting in a second-floor tatami room with windows open to the mild spring breeze, enjoying cold udon with tempura, we were refreshed. We continued onward to Kiyomizu-dera, where we kimono-clad gaijin—particularly the men—were a bit of a spectacle, fielding several requests for photos with us by Japanese folks. Maybe our senpai are tired of this reaction, but I don't mind it, at least not yet. Having only recently and barely gotten the hang of dressing myself in a kimono, and it taking me around an hour to do it, I feel a kind of pride about it. My attitude is something like, "Hey, it took me lots of time and effort (and in some cases expense) to get dressed up like this, so heck yeah you should make a big deal about it and take my photo!" Maybe when kimono-dressing becomes more mundane for me, as it probably will soon given that we wear kimono to classes all day nearly every day, I'll start to feel differently.
April 11
Monday's first lecture was on haigata, or the formation of ash in the brazier, which is done to an exacting standard of smoothness and topology. The reasons we tea people bother to form the ash so exactingly include both beauty and utility: we form ash in a certain way to encourage airflow so that the fire burns properly, and we also do it to make the inside of the brazier visually appealing, evoking mountainous landscapes. Forming the ash correctly is an act of hospitality toward the guest and serves as training in making both seen and unseen places neat and clean. Our teacher noted that in a chaji, the formation of ash is usually the only thing the host has made himself (except perhaps for the sweets), so it is a keen indication of a tea person's skill and care.
Our second lecture of the morning was a Japanese history lecture on the Muromachi period, a politically tumultuous but culturally fruitful era from roughly 1336 to 1573. That's a lot to cover in one 80-minute lecture, but we only have one Japanese history lecture a month, so we have to move at lightning speed.
Jitsugi was more warigeiko (literally "divided training"), in which we practice component skills outside of the context of a temae (tea-making or charcoal-laying procedure) in order to refine them, or learn them for the first time if we're new to chado. Googling "warigeiko" leads to a couple of past Midorikai students' blogs, and it may be interesting for you to read what Cone and Eric wrote at similar points in their Midorikai experience. Regarding sitting seiza, I can't help but smile in recognition at Eric's report, "The best I can report concerning my knees is that I am quite obviously not alone in my distress." The teachers are not strict to the point of insisting we sit seiza for so long that we're in intolerable pain or unable to stand, but the norm for seiza endurance is clearly longer than our bodies are accustomed to. We trust that our bodies will adapt with time, as our senpais' have.
April 12
On Tuesday morning we had a lecture on Zen and Zazen by Matsunami-sensei followed by a meditation session in the zendo on the top floor of the Urasenke Center. We did both sitting and walking meditation, the former atop zabuton on tatami mats, in seiza since we were wearing kimono for class for the first time that day. I have a hard time overcoming my self-consciousness to get into meditation when I'm around other people. I managed to get into a more meditative state of mind during the walking meditation; it probably helped not to have the distracting pain of sitting seiza to overcome in addition to the distracting self-consciousness of meditating with other people.
Jitsugi was yet more warigeiko, this time with Murata-sensei, who arrived late since I think he was filling in for another teacher who was out sick. To make up for the lost time we practiced for the whole session without the usual "break" to enjoy tea and okashi served either by ourselves or our senpai (since we were not yet doing temae in which we'd have tea and okashi as a matter of course when it's our turn to be a guest). That put me in a bad mood, which I feel a little guilty admitting; the point of jitsugi is practice, not our own enjoyment of a bowl of tea and okashi. But that nicety does make practice pleasant, and I suppose I've come to depend on it as a pick-me-up and a tangible reward. At any rate, each student is alloted one omogashi for jitsugi, so we could take ours after practice. One of my senpai suggested it's easiest just to eat it in the mizuya rather than bother packing it up, taking it to the closet where we stow our personal belongings, and carrying it back to the dorm. I took her advice by eating it and was soon handed an unsolicited bowl of tea, which I was happy to consume, my mizuya chores that day not being especially onerous. Another senpai, whom I later learned was in a bad mood due to a difficult practice session (the senpai and kohai do jitsugi separately, so I didn't know this), became upset at my standing around not only not being productive during our cleanup time but having caused another of my senpai to take time away from his cleanup duties to make me a bowl of tea. This made me upset, because (a) I was just doing what another of my senpai suggested, (b) the senpai who suggested I eat the sweet then was already finishing up the chores the two of us were responsible for, and (c) how was I supposed to know I was obligating someone to make me a bowl of tea? I've since gotten an apology, so I don't feel that bad about it now, but it was upsetting at the time. That illustrates something to watch out for as a foreigner in Japanese culture, though—inadvertently obligating someone to do something for you. It's tough to avoid unless someone warns you ahead of time.
April 13
Yesterday morning we spent practicing haigata. It was the first time some of us kohai had ever handled this special ash, even those of us who have been practicing chado for years, since many tea practice rooms outside of Japan use an electric brazier in lieu of the traditional charcoal, which is expensive and fragile to ship from Japan. (As of several months ago, I understand there to be a fellow in Virginia who's working on developing a method to make charcoal for chado, which would be a boon to the mid-Atlantic chado community.) From reading previous Midorikai students' blogs I've come to expect haigata to be frustrating to the point of inducing tears. The point on this day, for us kohai, was mostly to get a feel for handling the ash, so I didn't feel pressured to do it as well as our senpai. Even so, I cringed when, at the end of the practicum, Hamana-sensei told us he'd be critiquing each of our work in front of the class. It wasn't as bad as I'd feared; I'd managed to do at least a few things right, and even the senpai had plenty of room for improvement.
After lunch, jitsugi was one last round of warigeiko before we'd be moving on to real temae. Nothing exciting happened, which was just fine.
April 14
This morning our first lecture was on Japanese art history; this lectured covered art of the Jōmon, Yayoi, and Kofun periods. It was fascinating. I wonder whether I'll continue to be interested as we progress through later historical periods; in part my interest in these periods' art stems from my experience watching and re-watching the PBS series How Art Made the World and considering what led the earliest human civilizations to make art.
Our second lecture was on the development of wabi-cha. I notice that while I intellectually prefer the subtle, organic humility of wabi-cha to the more polished, elaborate shoin style, when it comes time to choose actual utensils I tend toward those in the latter style. For example, in tea bowls I prefer Kyo-yaki to Hagi-yaki. I suspect that as I gain more experience with chado my demonstrated preferences may mature toward wabi-cha.
Today's jitsugi was ryakubon, the first temae that new tea students learn. It's a relatively simple procedure that takes about fifteen minutes with one guest. Water is heated over the brazier in a small iron kettle with a handle and spout; the utensils are set on a round tray. The version we do here has the host sitting 45 degrees away from the guest instead of 90 degrees as I'd learned at home. It was easy to adapt to, and I prefer the way that's closer to facing the guest because of the feeling of fellowship I think it engenders. Today's jitsugi felt a lot more like okeiko at home than the past several days of warigeiko have felt, perhaps because it has been years since I've done warigeiko at home, and the intensity differential (between casual home and serious here) with warigeiko is perhaps wider than it is with regular temae. So today felt more familiar and comfortable. It was funny, though, how quiet our room was with soft-spoken Imagawa-sensei and us somber new students compared to the noise in the adjoining rooms, where a Japanese teacher was instructing loudly on one side and our senpai's class conversing loudly (something about a naked lady and a sheep?!) on the other.
April 10
On Sunday we Midorikai students enjoyed complimentary tickets (courtesy of our school) to Miyako Odori at Gion Kobu Kaburenjo. They were front-row seats with a brief chanoyu temae beforehand (by local maiko) included. At the insistence of one of our senpai, we wore kimonos, which for us kohai was our first time putting them on largely by ourselves. Fellow kohai June and I needed some help from senpai Karoliina, but we managed it; I considered it a sort of dry run for getting dressed in kimono for class, which we're encouraged to do as soon as we collectively can.Before coming here I'd assumed that geiko and maiko are given only cursory instruction in chanoyu and perform it in a sort of amateur way. But actually they practice their temae under our school's teachers, and my impression is that while they aren't practicing as intensively as we are, they probably do so more frequently and seriously than the once-a-week okeiko we have back home.
This pre-show temae was the kind with countless rows of guests, all but one or two of whom are served from tea whisked behind the scenes out of expediency. So it certainly didn't have any sort of intimate feeling to it, but it was fascinating to watch the maiko perform it. Here's a video of it (not taken by me). During the main attraction—i.e., the dance performance that followed—photography and videography were not allowed (so they could sell 600-yen program booklets with a paltry few photos of the performance). That hasn't stopped other people, though, thus the photo above and/or to the left, depending on the size of your browser window. The performance was enjoyable in a light, seasonal kind of way.Afterward we made our way through the enormous crowds of sakura-season tourists along the narrow streets of Higashiyama, past the Rikiya Ryokan where I've stayed twice on previous trips to Kyoto, to a small restaurant that was open for service at the unorthodox hour of 15:30 or so. Sitting in a second-floor tatami room with windows open to the mild spring breeze, enjoying cold udon with tempura, we were refreshed. We continued onward to Kiyomizu-dera, where we kimono-clad gaijin—particularly the men—were a bit of a spectacle, fielding several requests for photos with us by Japanese folks. Maybe our senpai are tired of this reaction, but I don't mind it, at least not yet. Having only recently and barely gotten the hang of dressing myself in a kimono, and it taking me around an hour to do it, I feel a kind of pride about it. My attitude is something like, "Hey, it took me lots of time and effort (and in some cases expense) to get dressed up like this, so heck yeah you should make a big deal about it and take my photo!" Maybe when kimono-dressing becomes more mundane for me, as it probably will soon given that we wear kimono to classes all day nearly every day, I'll start to feel differently.April 11
Monday's first lecture was on haigata, or the formation of ash in the brazier, which is done to an exacting standard of smoothness and topology. The reasons we tea people bother to form the ash so exactingly include both beauty and utility: we form ash in a certain way to encourage airflow so that the fire burns properly, and we also do it to make the inside of the brazier visually appealing, evoking mountainous landscapes. Forming the ash correctly is an act of hospitality toward the guest and serves as training in making both seen and unseen places neat and clean. Our teacher noted that in a chaji, the formation of ash is usually the only thing the host has made himself (except perhaps for the sweets), so it is a keen indication of a tea person's skill and care.
Our second lecture of the morning was a Japanese history lecture on the Muromachi period, a politically tumultuous but culturally fruitful era from roughly 1336 to 1573. That's a lot to cover in one 80-minute lecture, but we only have one Japanese history lecture a month, so we have to move at lightning speed.
Jitsugi was more warigeiko (literally "divided training"), in which we practice component skills outside of the context of a temae (tea-making or charcoal-laying procedure) in order to refine them, or learn them for the first time if we're new to chado. Googling "warigeiko" leads to a couple of past Midorikai students' blogs, and it may be interesting for you to read what Cone and Eric wrote at similar points in their Midorikai experience. Regarding sitting seiza, I can't help but smile in recognition at Eric's report, "The best I can report concerning my knees is that I am quite obviously not alone in my distress." The teachers are not strict to the point of insisting we sit seiza for so long that we're in intolerable pain or unable to stand, but the norm for seiza endurance is clearly longer than our bodies are accustomed to. We trust that our bodies will adapt with time, as our senpais' have.
April 12
On Tuesday morning we had a lecture on Zen and Zazen by Matsunami-sensei followed by a meditation session in the zendo on the top floor of the Urasenke Center. We did both sitting and walking meditation, the former atop zabuton on tatami mats, in seiza since we were wearing kimono for class for the first time that day. I have a hard time overcoming my self-consciousness to get into meditation when I'm around other people. I managed to get into a more meditative state of mind during the walking meditation; it probably helped not to have the distracting pain of sitting seiza to overcome in addition to the distracting self-consciousness of meditating with other people.
Jitsugi was yet more warigeiko, this time with Murata-sensei, who arrived late since I think he was filling in for another teacher who was out sick. To make up for the lost time we practiced for the whole session without the usual "break" to enjoy tea and okashi served either by ourselves or our senpai (since we were not yet doing temae in which we'd have tea and okashi as a matter of course when it's our turn to be a guest). That put me in a bad mood, which I feel a little guilty admitting; the point of jitsugi is practice, not our own enjoyment of a bowl of tea and okashi. But that nicety does make practice pleasant, and I suppose I've come to depend on it as a pick-me-up and a tangible reward. At any rate, each student is alloted one omogashi for jitsugi, so we could take ours after practice. One of my senpai suggested it's easiest just to eat it in the mizuya rather than bother packing it up, taking it to the closet where we stow our personal belongings, and carrying it back to the dorm. I took her advice by eating it and was soon handed an unsolicited bowl of tea, which I was happy to consume, my mizuya chores that day not being especially onerous. Another senpai, whom I later learned was in a bad mood due to a difficult practice session (the senpai and kohai do jitsugi separately, so I didn't know this), became upset at my standing around not only not being productive during our cleanup time but having caused another of my senpai to take time away from his cleanup duties to make me a bowl of tea. This made me upset, because (a) I was just doing what another of my senpai suggested, (b) the senpai who suggested I eat the sweet then was already finishing up the chores the two of us were responsible for, and (c) how was I supposed to know I was obligating someone to make me a bowl of tea? I've since gotten an apology, so I don't feel that bad about it now, but it was upsetting at the time. That illustrates something to watch out for as a foreigner in Japanese culture, though—inadvertently obligating someone to do something for you. It's tough to avoid unless someone warns you ahead of time.
April 13
Yesterday morning we spent practicing haigata. It was the first time some of us kohai had ever handled this special ash, even those of us who have been practicing chado for years, since many tea practice rooms outside of Japan use an electric brazier in lieu of the traditional charcoal, which is expensive and fragile to ship from Japan. (As of several months ago, I understand there to be a fellow in Virginia who's working on developing a method to make charcoal for chado, which would be a boon to the mid-Atlantic chado community.) From reading previous Midorikai students' blogs I've come to expect haigata to be frustrating to the point of inducing tears. The point on this day, for us kohai, was mostly to get a feel for handling the ash, so I didn't feel pressured to do it as well as our senpai. Even so, I cringed when, at the end of the practicum, Hamana-sensei told us he'd be critiquing each of our work in front of the class. It wasn't as bad as I'd feared; I'd managed to do at least a few things right, and even the senpai had plenty of room for improvement.
After lunch, jitsugi was one last round of warigeiko before we'd be moving on to real temae. Nothing exciting happened, which was just fine.
April 14
This morning our first lecture was on Japanese art history; this lectured covered art of the Jōmon, Yayoi, and Kofun periods. It was fascinating. I wonder whether I'll continue to be interested as we progress through later historical periods; in part my interest in these periods' art stems from my experience watching and re-watching the PBS series How Art Made the World and considering what led the earliest human civilizations to make art.
Our second lecture was on the development of wabi-cha. I notice that while I intellectually prefer the subtle, organic humility of wabi-cha to the more polished, elaborate shoin style, when it comes time to choose actual utensils I tend toward those in the latter style. For example, in tea bowls I prefer Kyo-yaki to Hagi-yaki. I suspect that as I gain more experience with chado my demonstrated preferences may mature toward wabi-cha.
Today's jitsugi was ryakubon, the first temae that new tea students learn. It's a relatively simple procedure that takes about fifteen minutes with one guest. Water is heated over the brazier in a small iron kettle with a handle and spout; the utensils are set on a round tray. The version we do here has the host sitting 45 degrees away from the guest instead of 90 degrees as I'd learned at home. It was easy to adapt to, and I prefer the way that's closer to facing the guest because of the feeling of fellowship I think it engenders. Today's jitsugi felt a lot more like okeiko at home than the past several days of warigeiko have felt, perhaps because it has been years since I've done warigeiko at home, and the intensity differential (between casual home and serious here) with warigeiko is perhaps wider than it is with regular temae. So today felt more familiar and comfortable. It was funny, though, how quiet our room was with soft-spoken Imagawa-sensei and us somber new students compared to the noise in the adjoining rooms, where a Japanese teacher was instructing loudly on one side and our senpai's class conversing loudly (something about a naked lady and a sheep?!) on the other.
