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May 14
It was a pleasant Saturday, and I made good use of an all-day bus pass. First stop: Kyoto Station, to see about getting cell phone service. I went to the first floor of the Bic Camera building where all the cell phone providers have their phones for sale. A Softbank representative told me it wouldn't be possible to get a contract with them using my own cell phone. An NTT DoCoMo representative told me that they only sell phones at that location; to sign up for a new contract, I'd need to make the short walk over to their store under Kyoto Tower, which I did. And I managed to sign up for voice and data service with an NTT DoCoMo-provided SIM card. But the rep there spent about an hour and a half trying to figure out how to get data service working with my phone before giving up. (Since then I've gotten it working, thanks not to the hours I spent with customer service reps and tech support but rather to this blog post.) I was getting hungry and impatient, but I accepted the partially-working arrangement eventually and left, grabbing a personal-sized margarita pizza in the underground Porta restaurant area before hopping another bus to Shijo. I checked out the big department stores for their rice cooker selection, but their choices were few and very pricey. Next I wandered Nishiki Market, where I bought some kind of brown rice, a variety pack of nama-fu, some little eggplants and little radishes, and a wasabi root. For a snack I stopped at Mochitsukiya for their yakimochi set A (白みそ、磯巻、亀山、甘辛、あべ川), which I highly recommend. Next I hopped another bus to Kitaoji Town, where I got a rice cooker, picnic blanket (chabako by the Kamo River, anyone?), wasabi grater, and kitchen knife.
May 15
I went with Anna to see Aoi Matsuri from Shimogamo-jinja. Since we didn't know what route the procession would take—and many of the familiar-to-Anna paths through the shrine were cordoned off—we wandered around, snacked on mitarashi dango, and eventually found our way to where some costumed participants were mounting horses to lead the procession as it resumed after a lunch break. To watch the procession itself, we walked up Shimogamo-hon-dori and found a break in the human fence that lined the street to squeeze in. Here are my pictures from Aoi Matsuri. 
After the procession we met up with Anna's friend Teruyo and her young daughter, walked westward along Imadegawa-dori, and enjoyed wagashi and matcha at Tsuruya Yoshinobu.
May 16
On Monday morning our first lecture was by Imagawa-sensei on haigata forms. I apologize for my brevity, but I think I may never finish this entry if I explain much. The next lecture was by Hlawatsch-sensei on Japan's Christian Century, 1549-1650, a fascinating time in Japanese history that started with hopeful Portuguese missionaries entering a politically chaotic Japan and ended with a strong shogunate expelling the barbarians, who threatened vassals' feudal allegiance to their lords with the idea of allegiance to the Pope.
That day's jitsugi was sugi-dana usucha with Hamana-sensei. The omogashi was "ao kaede" by Oimatsu. We used a couple of notable (which is how I count anything other than Rikyu-gata) usuchaki: a negoro-nuri chuunatsume and a Yugensai-gonomi oimatsu usuchaki.
May 17
On Tuesday we had a quiz on furo and tana usucha, and I got a perfect score for the first time! Following was a field trip to the nearby Kyoto City Archaeological Museum to view and handle Edo-period pottery recovered from a site in downtown Kyoto and currently being cataloged in a back workroom. Many of the pieces were damaged, but some weren't, and I think we all wished the museum would lend us a few of the pieces we saw. I hadn't known there were so many varieties of oribe ware; besides the standard black-white-green I'd seen before, there's kuro oribe 黒織部 (standard minus the green), oribe kuro 織部黒 (all black), ao oribe 青織部 (like standard but dominated by green), aka oribe 赤織部 (with red, possibly from clay), and Shino oribe 志野織部. We saw mukozuke, chawan, chaire, mizusashi, kogo, and something to do with oil lamps. In a country with this much history, Edo-period stuff isn't considered that old, but it was still amazing that we got to touch and handle it all. My favorite piece was a distorted chawan that might have been oribe kuro, though as I remember it the glaze was a dark color but not black. When my classmates share the thumb drive with their photos from the outing I'll take another look at it.
For jitsugi it was futaoki day with Imagawa-sensei, who didn't realize it was futaoki day until the third or fourth tana usucha temae in which someone brought out a notable futaoki. I chose to practice with the ikanjin 井閑人 futaoki since I have this (adorable!) variation on it at home.
May 18
We were supposed to have our first meeting with Okusama, who is both O-iemoto's wife and vice principal of the school, this morning, but the meeting was canceled due to a funeral she had to attend. Instead, Gary-sensei got some extra time to teach us about Rikyu-konomi and Rikyu-gata stuff in a continuation of the rekidai lecture series.
In the afternoon, instead of regular jitsugi we had shoza keiko at Kenshu Kaikan (on the second floor of the men's dorm). This was where we practiced eating as we would at a chaji. Yes, eating. Like everything else in chado, it is done in a particular way with intricacies that need to be learned. Former Midorikai student Eric Dean described it well in his blog:
May 19
On Thursday morning Hamana-sensei lectured on more tana: Gengensai-konomi gogyodana, kokodana, and sugidana; Yumyosai-konomi Yohojoku; Ennosai-konomi Yoshinodana, Kan'unjoku, Tsubotsubodana, Genjidana; Tantansai-konomi Tsurezuredana, Kotobukidana, Tagasodedana, Ouchidana, Yachiyodana; Houndai-konomi San'undana, Koundana, Chikujudana. As you might expect from the length of that list, by the end we were flying through the descriptions with little chance to take notes or let the images sink in.
For jitsugi we began shozumi and koicha, under Hamana-sensei's guidance. Andrei was the only one of our classmates who actually did shozumi that day, but we are told that in Japan if you observe someone perform something you are considered to be as responsible for having learned it as the person who performed it. Personally, I think this expectation is problematic, but there's no room to argue about it. The day's omogashi was Soothing Breeze (kunpuu, 薫風) by Surugaya (駿河屋), pictured above.
May 20
On Friday morning we paid a visit to Urasenke's Eizenbu 営繕部, or Department of Maintenance and Construction, which is building a new two-story tea room structure. Here are my photos from the visit. We saw some impressive structural members made from cypress and American pine that will fit together in beautifully crafted joints without nails, and the heck of it is that these gorgeously hewn beams won't even be visible in the finished structure. We saw a traditional Japanese cedar tokobashira as Maeda-san explained how it joins with other structural elements around it. We saw a long piece of a cypress variety called hiba 檜葉 being planed to produce an incredibly smooth, plastic-like surface—along with a perfectly uniform, transparent shaving the length of the board. We saw ajiro, variously textured tokobashira-in-waiting, and some okimizuya constructed with a level of care we couldn't have imagined.
The afternoon's jitsugi was more hakobi koicha.
May 21-22
On Saturday I visited Kobo-san—the monthly temple market at Toji—with June. We were mostly shopping for hitoe kimono and accessories for the upcoming changeover from awase to hitoe kimono. I dislike shopping for used kimono at these markets, though, because they're all in a heap and any good ones have almost inevitably got stains on them. That said, I got a striped hitoe kimono that pleases me, adding to the one red-and-gray komon hitoe I brought and the two komon hitoe I picked up from the pile left by former Midorikai students. As it does even on weekdays but especially when it falls on a weekend, the market became choked with people before long, so we left to seek out a large kimono store June had heard about called Mimuro. And indeed we found it and fell under the spell of its discount-wielding owner. I bought a green iromuji hitoe kimono and a coordinating summer obi, obijime, and obiage; a mustard-colored obi and orange obijime and obiage to match the striped hitoe kimono I'd bought at Kobo-san; casual zori to replace the now-worn-out ones I've had for years; a new kimono bra; and literally on my way out the door a yukata and yukata obi because I couldn't resist a yukata design of trees silhouetted against a star-filled night sky. So now I have not only kimono to wear to practice and special events through the months of June and September but also something to wear to festivals, which occur with happy frequency in Kyoto.
May 23
On Monday we had jitsugi in the morning in Kenshu Kaikan. I did shozumi for the first time, under Ro-sensei's supervision, and it Did Not Go Well. It wasn't a disaster in the sense of breaking or spilling anything, but I'm pretty sure Ro-sensei does not expect to be teaching us new temae, and I should have learned shozumi through a combination of observing my classmates doing it, reading about it from old Chanoyu Quarterly issues, and asking my senpai if I had any questions about it. I had observed and read, but clearly not well enough. Ugh.
The reason for having jitsugi in the morning was the afternoon's field trip to Oimatsu 老松, famous wagashi maker, to learn how to make three kinds of higashi (the dry sweets served before usucha but honestly not much loved by anyone). I photographed the process for each: uchimono, kizatou, and suhama. Realistically, I don't foresee making higashi myself; traditionally for our own hango-chaji we Midorikai students make the namagashi but not the higashi, and higashi is sufficiently non-perishable that it can be shipped overseas. Maybe if I'm feeling ambitious I'll buy a bag of wasanbon and a mold before I leave Japan next year.
May 24
One of our senpai had his hango-chaji on this day. We did the usual pre-chaji cleaning beforehand. Here's my braindump from after the chaji, unfortunately not formatted into sentences. Sorry.
machiai: scroll with fish, cups were hagi that reminded us of asahiyaki
shoza
tokonoma: scroll: seizan ryokusui
kettle: very wet! red patina
tana: kuwa kojoku with white mizusashi, triangular slanted lid with pinecone knob
byobu: turquoise/teal design, quite eyecatching, goes nicely with tana and mizusashi
phoenix + clouds (houn) hiranatsume
shozumi: tsuru feather, wooden kogo with sliding lid, presumably from the U.S., found in Midorikai dogubeya
omogashi: botan, with kuzu on the outside and hand-made shiro-an inside
goza
tokonoma: irises, a purple one just beginning to open, a white one closed, another bud whose petals we couldn't see
koicha: baba no mukashi
first bowl: kuroraku
second bowl: Korean?
ikkanjin futaoki
zabosai chashaku
shifuku: botan
kobukusa: shippo
usucha
first bowl was shigaraki tri-lobed bowl
second bowl (the one I drank from) was large pink raku (?) oke shape made by teishu
more bowls with nanbanjin design
higashi: blue water uchimono and little white meringues from Poland
themes
slants: mizusashi top, hishaku kazari, irises hanging in tokonoma
hermit: futaoki, scroll
circle, triangle, and square representing whole universe on tana
May 25
On Wednesday morning Imagawa-sensei lectured on hanaire, going over the names for various metal and bamboo ones but also drawing an extended metaphor between the shin/gyo/so progression of chadogu and the progression of the Japanese writing system, which was likewise originally imported from China:
Next Mittwer-sensei lectured on Urasenke organizational structure, including the locations of the various departments, and I was struck by her claim that there is a supercomputer in the Urasenke Center's basement. Surely not? Afternoon jitsugi was more hakobi koicha.
May 26
Thursday morning began with a quiz on sumitemae and koicha. We haven't gotten our scored quizzes back yet, but I suspect I didn't do so well on the sumitemae parts. Hamana-sensei lectured on June seasonal topics, providing us with a hundredth reminder that the rainy season is coming. In the afternoon we began tana koicha with the sugidana. The omogashi was kinome mochi, pictured at left/above.
May 27
On Friday morning Gary-sensei gave us a lecture on the fourth floor of the Urasenke Center on invitations and letter-writing. It was very helpful, and I'm looking forward to getting a copy of his list of seasonal remarks that can be used to begin a letter. In the afternoon most of the regular teaching staff was unavailable due to planning for an intensive seminar, so we had Kunimi-sensei as a substitute teacher. All of us gathered in Ichi no Ma, the 1As and 1Bs alternating doing unohana chabako and hana chabako, respectively. I haven't been mentioning our mizuya toban duties much, but that day I handled flowers on my own and chose a single sasayuri ササユリ lily in a bronze tsurukubi (lit. "crane's neck") vase. The top of the flower reached twice the height of the hanaire, which I thought was a general guideline, but that was too high. And the flower, which already was facing downward a little sadly at the beginning of jitsugi, was looking downright dejected by the end.
[Edited to add: One memory I wanted to record from that afternoon's jitsugi was the sounds I heard simultaneously from outside our practice room: Buddhist chanting (from Honpo-ji, I'd guess), Westminster chimes from I know not where, and Gakuen students laughing in an adjacent practice room.]
May 28-29
I did plenty of reading and sleeping on this rainy weekend. On Sunday morning I tuned in to an episode of an NHK World TV program called Booked for Japan that featured an interview with Daisosho. In the afternoon I went shopping for summer kimono accessories with Karo, June, Lani, and two students from China at Harajuku Chicago. I picked up some summer obijime and three obi suitable for June and I think part of September. I didn't have a hard time convincing my compatriots to join me afterward for sweets at Lipton.
May 30
Monday morning was a Daisosho lecture, but since the short-range radios our bilingual teachers use for simultaneous interpretation weren't working at all, I didn't understand much of the lecture. I did pick up his favorable mention of the book Three Cups of Tea, whose web site suggests that it probably meshes well with Urasenke's motto "Peacefulness through a bowl of tea." Next we went to Chado Kaikan, unusually enough, for a lecture by Murata-sensei on mizuya work. He did speak a few words of English, but not enough for me to follow most of what he said, which seemed to be potentially helpful advice on setting up for a chaji like the one each of us will be hosting. Since we were in a tatami room, of course we were sitting seiza, so we were in for a long day.
For afternoon jitsugi I'd been hoping for a linguistic break by getting our one English-speaking teacher, but our teacher turned out to be Ro-sensei, who, while he doesn't speak English, doesn't really speak much period. He supervised our practice of tana koicha. The day's omogashi was kuzuyaki, pictured right/above. Back home I wasn't a big fan of koicha, but I have to say I've been enjoying the Chousho no Mukashi 長松の昔 koicha (from Ryuoen) we've been drinking lately. For us 1As it was our first day of being the the "main" mizuya toban people; I handled the charcoal and had a rather good time doing it.
May 31
Finally we've reached today. This morning we reported to the fourth floor of the Urasenke Center for a show-and-tell by Tachibana-sensei on Edo-period kogo (incense containers). There was an elaborate ranking chart that had been established for them akin to the ranking of sumo wrestlers. The reasoning for particular types' positions in the ranking was a mystery to me, but it was interesting to see and handle the examples she brought. Most of the ceramic ones were glazed in vivid colors. My favorite, though, was made from a piece of wood that was split and then lacquered; the bottom had a little space carved in it for the incense, and the top was decorated with a snowflake makie design.
For jitsugi today we began the konarai temae with Hamana-sensei teaching us kinindate usucha (serving usucha to a noble guest!). I picked out the san-un-dana for a tana, sparking debate in the mizuya about which vessel—the katakuchi mizutsugi or the koshiguro yakan—is used to refill the mizusashi on it. I went with the first option, which turned out to be the right answer. I enjoyed learning this new temae and frankly it was a relief to me to have an English-speaking teacher guiding us. This evening after dinner I did haigata in preparation for tomorrow's class where I'll try shozumi for a second time. Wish me luck.
It was a pleasant Saturday, and I made good use of an all-day bus pass. First stop: Kyoto Station, to see about getting cell phone service. I went to the first floor of the Bic Camera building where all the cell phone providers have their phones for sale. A Softbank representative told me it wouldn't be possible to get a contract with them using my own cell phone. An NTT DoCoMo representative told me that they only sell phones at that location; to sign up for a new contract, I'd need to make the short walk over to their store under Kyoto Tower, which I did. And I managed to sign up for voice and data service with an NTT DoCoMo-provided SIM card. But the rep there spent about an hour and a half trying to figure out how to get data service working with my phone before giving up. (Since then I've gotten it working, thanks not to the hours I spent with customer service reps and tech support but rather to this blog post.) I was getting hungry and impatient, but I accepted the partially-working arrangement eventually and left, grabbing a personal-sized margarita pizza in the underground Porta restaurant area before hopping another bus to Shijo. I checked out the big department stores for their rice cooker selection, but their choices were few and very pricey. Next I wandered Nishiki Market, where I bought some kind of brown rice, a variety pack of nama-fu, some little eggplants and little radishes, and a wasabi root. For a snack I stopped at Mochitsukiya for their yakimochi set A (白みそ、磯巻、亀山、甘辛、あべ川), which I highly recommend. Next I hopped another bus to Kitaoji Town, where I got a rice cooker, picnic blanket (chabako by the Kamo River, anyone?), wasabi grater, and kitchen knife.
May 15
I went with Anna to see Aoi Matsuri from Shimogamo-jinja. Since we didn't know what route the procession would take—and many of the familiar-to-Anna paths through the shrine were cordoned off—we wandered around, snacked on mitarashi dango, and eventually found our way to where some costumed participants were mounting horses to lead the procession as it resumed after a lunch break. To watch the procession itself, we walked up Shimogamo-hon-dori and found a break in the human fence that lined the street to squeeze in. Here are my pictures from Aoi Matsuri. After the procession we met up with Anna's friend Teruyo and her young daughter, walked westward along Imadegawa-dori, and enjoyed wagashi and matcha at Tsuruya Yoshinobu.May 16
On Monday morning our first lecture was by Imagawa-sensei on haigata forms. I apologize for my brevity, but I think I may never finish this entry if I explain much. The next lecture was by Hlawatsch-sensei on Japan's Christian Century, 1549-1650, a fascinating time in Japanese history that started with hopeful Portuguese missionaries entering a politically chaotic Japan and ended with a strong shogunate expelling the barbarians, who threatened vassals' feudal allegiance to their lords with the idea of allegiance to the Pope.
That day's jitsugi was sugi-dana usucha with Hamana-sensei. The omogashi was "ao kaede" by Oimatsu. We used a couple of notable (which is how I count anything other than Rikyu-gata) usuchaki: a negoro-nuri chuunatsume and a Yugensai-gonomi oimatsu usuchaki.
May 17
On Tuesday we had a quiz on furo and tana usucha, and I got a perfect score for the first time! Following was a field trip to the nearby Kyoto City Archaeological Museum to view and handle Edo-period pottery recovered from a site in downtown Kyoto and currently being cataloged in a back workroom. Many of the pieces were damaged, but some weren't, and I think we all wished the museum would lend us a few of the pieces we saw. I hadn't known there were so many varieties of oribe ware; besides the standard black-white-green I'd seen before, there's kuro oribe 黒織部 (standard minus the green), oribe kuro 織部黒 (all black), ao oribe 青織部 (like standard but dominated by green), aka oribe 赤織部 (with red, possibly from clay), and Shino oribe 志野織部. We saw mukozuke, chawan, chaire, mizusashi, kogo, and something to do with oil lamps. In a country with this much history, Edo-period stuff isn't considered that old, but it was still amazing that we got to touch and handle it all. My favorite piece was a distorted chawan that might have been oribe kuro, though as I remember it the glaze was a dark color but not black. When my classmates share the thumb drive with their photos from the outing I'll take another look at it.
For jitsugi it was futaoki day with Imagawa-sensei, who didn't realize it was futaoki day until the third or fourth tana usucha temae in which someone brought out a notable futaoki. I chose to practice with the ikanjin 井閑人 futaoki since I have this (adorable!) variation on it at home.
May 18
We were supposed to have our first meeting with Okusama, who is both O-iemoto's wife and vice principal of the school, this morning, but the meeting was canceled due to a funeral she had to attend. Instead, Gary-sensei got some extra time to teach us about Rikyu-konomi and Rikyu-gata stuff in a continuation of the rekidai lecture series.
In the afternoon, instead of regular jitsugi we had shoza keiko at Kenshu Kaikan (on the second floor of the men's dorm). This was where we practiced eating as we would at a chaji. Yes, eating. Like everything else in chado, it is done in a particular way with intricacies that need to be learned. Former Midorikai student Eric Dean described it well in his blog:
As involved as kaiseki cooking is, actually serving and eating the meal rival the preparation in complexity. All the various dishes come out in predetermined order, are set down in specific places, are received with scripted words and movements. We pantomimed eating the foods and drinking sake from shallow red hikihai saucers. We learned how to use chopsticks properly in the kaiseki context: first pick up the bowl you’ll eat from, and hold in in your left hand; then pick up the chopsticks from the tray in front of you with your right, holding them from above; transfer them to the hooked little finger of your left hand so that the right can orbit the back ends of the chopsticks and grasp them again from beneath in order to use them.
Don’t ask me to explain the part of the meal when the host brings out the hassun tray and serves each guest in turn while also pouring sake for each and drinking a serving of sake poured by each. I participated in it and the procedure still has my head spinning. All I know is that this can be very dangerous for the host at a chaji with many guests. Hamana-sensei told the story of a chaji he’d helped to host, at which the host himself actually passed out after this portion of the meal, and had to be revived with strong tea and a walk around the garden.
May 19
On Thursday morning Hamana-sensei lectured on more tana: Gengensai-konomi gogyodana, kokodana, and sugidana; Yumyosai-konomi Yohojoku; Ennosai-konomi Yoshinodana, Kan'unjoku, Tsubotsubodana, Genjidana; Tantansai-konomi Tsurezuredana, Kotobukidana, Tagasodedana, Ouchidana, Yachiyodana; Houndai-konomi San'undana, Koundana, Chikujudana. As you might expect from the length of that list, by the end we were flying through the descriptions with little chance to take notes or let the images sink in.
For jitsugi we began shozumi and koicha, under Hamana-sensei's guidance. Andrei was the only one of our classmates who actually did shozumi that day, but we are told that in Japan if you observe someone perform something you are considered to be as responsible for having learned it as the person who performed it. Personally, I think this expectation is problematic, but there's no room to argue about it. The day's omogashi was Soothing Breeze (kunpuu, 薫風) by Surugaya (駿河屋), pictured above.May 20
On Friday morning we paid a visit to Urasenke's Eizenbu 営繕部, or Department of Maintenance and Construction, which is building a new two-story tea room structure. Here are my photos from the visit. We saw some impressive structural members made from cypress and American pine that will fit together in beautifully crafted joints without nails, and the heck of it is that these gorgeously hewn beams won't even be visible in the finished structure. We saw a traditional Japanese cedar tokobashira as Maeda-san explained how it joins with other structural elements around it. We saw a long piece of a cypress variety called hiba 檜葉 being planed to produce an incredibly smooth, plastic-like surface—along with a perfectly uniform, transparent shaving the length of the board. We saw ajiro, variously textured tokobashira-in-waiting, and some okimizuya constructed with a level of care we couldn't have imagined.The afternoon's jitsugi was more hakobi koicha.
May 21-22
On Saturday I visited Kobo-san—the monthly temple market at Toji—with June. We were mostly shopping for hitoe kimono and accessories for the upcoming changeover from awase to hitoe kimono. I dislike shopping for used kimono at these markets, though, because they're all in a heap and any good ones have almost inevitably got stains on them. That said, I got a striped hitoe kimono that pleases me, adding to the one red-and-gray komon hitoe I brought and the two komon hitoe I picked up from the pile left by former Midorikai students. As it does even on weekdays but especially when it falls on a weekend, the market became choked with people before long, so we left to seek out a large kimono store June had heard about called Mimuro. And indeed we found it and fell under the spell of its discount-wielding owner. I bought a green iromuji hitoe kimono and a coordinating summer obi, obijime, and obiage; a mustard-colored obi and orange obijime and obiage to match the striped hitoe kimono I'd bought at Kobo-san; casual zori to replace the now-worn-out ones I've had for years; a new kimono bra; and literally on my way out the door a yukata and yukata obi because I couldn't resist a yukata design of trees silhouetted against a star-filled night sky. So now I have not only kimono to wear to practice and special events through the months of June and September but also something to wear to festivals, which occur with happy frequency in Kyoto.
May 23
On Monday we had jitsugi in the morning in Kenshu Kaikan. I did shozumi for the first time, under Ro-sensei's supervision, and it Did Not Go Well. It wasn't a disaster in the sense of breaking or spilling anything, but I'm pretty sure Ro-sensei does not expect to be teaching us new temae, and I should have learned shozumi through a combination of observing my classmates doing it, reading about it from old Chanoyu Quarterly issues, and asking my senpai if I had any questions about it. I had observed and read, but clearly not well enough. Ugh.
The reason for having jitsugi in the morning was the afternoon's field trip to Oimatsu 老松, famous wagashi maker, to learn how to make three kinds of higashi (the dry sweets served before usucha but honestly not much loved by anyone). I photographed the process for each: uchimono, kizatou, and suhama. Realistically, I don't foresee making higashi myself; traditionally for our own hango-chaji we Midorikai students make the namagashi but not the higashi, and higashi is sufficiently non-perishable that it can be shipped overseas. Maybe if I'm feeling ambitious I'll buy a bag of wasanbon and a mold before I leave Japan next year.May 24
One of our senpai had his hango-chaji on this day. We did the usual pre-chaji cleaning beforehand. Here's my braindump from after the chaji, unfortunately not formatted into sentences. Sorry.
machiai: scroll with fish, cups were hagi that reminded us of asahiyaki
shoza
tokonoma: scroll: seizan ryokusui
kettle: very wet! red patina
tana: kuwa kojoku with white mizusashi, triangular slanted lid with pinecone knob
byobu: turquoise/teal design, quite eyecatching, goes nicely with tana and mizusashi
phoenix + clouds (houn) hiranatsume
shozumi: tsuru feather, wooden kogo with sliding lid, presumably from the U.S., found in Midorikai dogubeya
omogashi: botan, with kuzu on the outside and hand-made shiro-an inside
goza
tokonoma: irises, a purple one just beginning to open, a white one closed, another bud whose petals we couldn't see
koicha: baba no mukashi
first bowl: kuroraku
second bowl: Korean?
ikkanjin futaoki
zabosai chashaku
shifuku: botan
kobukusa: shippo
usucha
first bowl was shigaraki tri-lobed bowl
second bowl (the one I drank from) was large pink raku (?) oke shape made by teishu
more bowls with nanbanjin design
higashi: blue water uchimono and little white meringues from Poland
themes
slants: mizusashi top, hishaku kazari, irises hanging in tokonoma
hermit: futaoki, scroll
circle, triangle, and square representing whole universe on tana
May 25
On Wednesday morning Imagawa-sensei lectured on hanaire, going over the names for various metal and bamboo ones but also drawing an extended metaphor between the shin/gyo/so progression of chadogu and the progression of the Japanese writing system, which was likewise originally imported from China:
| formality level | impetus | hanaire | in the Japanese writing system |
|---|---|---|---|
| 真 shin (formal) | import | bronze, celadon, sometsuke, Chinese pottery | kanji: 安 以 宇 |
| 行 gyo (semi-formal) | imitate | glazed Japanese-made pottery, including seto, takatori, hagi | katakana: ア イ ウ |
| 草 so (informal) | invent | unglazed Japanese-made pottery, bamboo, basketry | hiragana: あ い う |
Next Mittwer-sensei lectured on Urasenke organizational structure, including the locations of the various departments, and I was struck by her claim that there is a supercomputer in the Urasenke Center's basement. Surely not? Afternoon jitsugi was more hakobi koicha.
May 26
Thursday morning began with a quiz on sumitemae and koicha. We haven't gotten our scored quizzes back yet, but I suspect I didn't do so well on the sumitemae parts. Hamana-sensei lectured on June seasonal topics, providing us with a hundredth reminder that the rainy season is coming. In the afternoon we began tana koicha with the sugidana. The omogashi was kinome mochi, pictured at left/above.May 27
On Friday morning Gary-sensei gave us a lecture on the fourth floor of the Urasenke Center on invitations and letter-writing. It was very helpful, and I'm looking forward to getting a copy of his list of seasonal remarks that can be used to begin a letter. In the afternoon most of the regular teaching staff was unavailable due to planning for an intensive seminar, so we had Kunimi-sensei as a substitute teacher. All of us gathered in Ichi no Ma, the 1As and 1Bs alternating doing unohana chabako and hana chabako, respectively. I haven't been mentioning our mizuya toban duties much, but that day I handled flowers on my own and chose a single sasayuri ササユリ lily in a bronze tsurukubi (lit. "crane's neck") vase. The top of the flower reached twice the height of the hanaire, which I thought was a general guideline, but that was too high. And the flower, which already was facing downward a little sadly at the beginning of jitsugi, was looking downright dejected by the end.
[Edited to add: One memory I wanted to record from that afternoon's jitsugi was the sounds I heard simultaneously from outside our practice room: Buddhist chanting (from Honpo-ji, I'd guess), Westminster chimes from I know not where, and Gakuen students laughing in an adjacent practice room.]
May 28-29
I did plenty of reading and sleeping on this rainy weekend. On Sunday morning I tuned in to an episode of an NHK World TV program called Booked for Japan that featured an interview with Daisosho. In the afternoon I went shopping for summer kimono accessories with Karo, June, Lani, and two students from China at Harajuku Chicago. I picked up some summer obijime and three obi suitable for June and I think part of September. I didn't have a hard time convincing my compatriots to join me afterward for sweets at Lipton.
May 30
Monday morning was a Daisosho lecture, but since the short-range radios our bilingual teachers use for simultaneous interpretation weren't working at all, I didn't understand much of the lecture. I did pick up his favorable mention of the book Three Cups of Tea, whose web site suggests that it probably meshes well with Urasenke's motto "Peacefulness through a bowl of tea." Next we went to Chado Kaikan, unusually enough, for a lecture by Murata-sensei on mizuya work. He did speak a few words of English, but not enough for me to follow most of what he said, which seemed to be potentially helpful advice on setting up for a chaji like the one each of us will be hosting. Since we were in a tatami room, of course we were sitting seiza, so we were in for a long day.
For afternoon jitsugi I'd been hoping for a linguistic break by getting our one English-speaking teacher, but our teacher turned out to be Ro-sensei, who, while he doesn't speak English, doesn't really speak much period. He supervised our practice of tana koicha. The day's omogashi was kuzuyaki, pictured right/above. Back home I wasn't a big fan of koicha, but I have to say I've been enjoying the Chousho no Mukashi 長松の昔 koicha (from Ryuoen) we've been drinking lately. For us 1As it was our first day of being the the "main" mizuya toban people; I handled the charcoal and had a rather good time doing it.May 31
Finally we've reached today. This morning we reported to the fourth floor of the Urasenke Center for a show-and-tell by Tachibana-sensei on Edo-period kogo (incense containers). There was an elaborate ranking chart that had been established for them akin to the ranking of sumo wrestlers. The reasoning for particular types' positions in the ranking was a mystery to me, but it was interesting to see and handle the examples she brought. Most of the ceramic ones were glazed in vivid colors. My favorite, though, was made from a piece of wood that was split and then lacquered; the bottom had a little space carved in it for the incense, and the top was decorated with a snowflake makie design.
For jitsugi today we began the konarai temae with Hamana-sensei teaching us kinindate usucha (serving usucha to a noble guest!). I picked out the san-un-dana for a tana, sparking debate in the mizuya about which vessel—the katakuchi mizutsugi or the koshiguro yakan—is used to refill the mizusashi on it. I went with the first option, which turned out to be the right answer. I enjoyed learning this new temae and frankly it was a relief to me to have an English-speaking teacher guiding us. This evening after dinner I did haigata in preparation for tomorrow's class where I'll try shozumi for a second time. Wish me luck.
