radhardened

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:

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.

May 12

Our first lecture of the morning was by Swanson-sensei on Japanese art history during the Asuka, Hakuho, and Nara periods. Swanson-sensei noted that although she largely tries to expose us to secular art, since that's more applicable to chado, the influence of religious art is inescapable, and today we would see some images of religious art produced in the time after Buddhism was introduced to Japan in 552 (or 538). Since Buddhism was introduced from outside of Japan, naturally internationalization was a theme during these periods, with influences from Korea and China. Swanson-sensei pointed out that in the Buddhist art of these periods, similar standards of beauty applied to both aristocrats and deities, so that images of Buddha and bodhisattvas have clothing, jewelry, hairstyles, and poses that reflect contemporary aristocratic style (luxurious rather than modest). One image in particular that stuck with me portrayed the Buddha flanked by a pair of bodhisattvas in contrapposto postures. Swanson-sensei also told us about Shōsōin, a sort of "time capsule" of Emperor Shomu's belongings established in Nara by his widow after he died. Wikipedia reports that although "collections are not open to the public, selections are shown at Nara National Museum once a year in autumn." So, note to self: go visit Nara in the autumn. Also, Hamana-sensei seems to have forgotten that we've already been introduced to outside teachers like Swanson-sensei, Tanihata-sensei, and Matsunami-sensei, so each time we have another lecture from them he insists we 1As introduce ourselves. No one has spoken up and told him we've already done this.

Next Hamana-sensei lectured on more tana: Rikyu-konomi maru joku (unfinished paulownia wood), Rikyu-konomi Kakudana, Rikyu-konomi Tabidansu, Sotan-konomi Koraijoku, Sotan-konomi maru joku (ikkanbari lacquer), and Senso-konomi kuwa kojoku. I took notes at a furious pace, as is typical during a Hamana-sensei lecture, but I couldn't keep up with his descriptions of the kazari for shozumi, after koicha, after usucha, and sokazari, the first of which I'd never done and the last of which I didn't know the meaning. So I felt pretty lost toward the end of each tana description. I suspect we'll be expected to know this stuff when we get to it in jitsugi. :/ Guess I'll be scrambling for some reference materials.

That afternoon was our chance to do kokodana usucha, with Imagawa-sensei IIRC. I went first, and I didn't do too badly. The day's omogashi was karagoromo 唐衣 (meaning "ancient Chinese clothes") by Surugaya 駿河屋, pictured here. And other than that my memories of that day's practice have faded. That'll teach me to procrastinate so long in posting an update.

This morning was our (monthly, I think) lecture on Zen followed by a session of zazen. Matsunami-sensei talked about Daitoku-ji and the seaport city of Sakai in the Muromachi period. He also talked about monastic life and gave us a handout comparing a typical daily schedule in a Zen monastery in Japan, a Trappist abbey in the U.S.A., and a Benedictine monastery in Australia. Common features are an early start to the day (between 3 and 6 a.m.), meditation, prayer, and work. The Zen monks are unique among the three in their practice of takahatsu and in their five tea times throughout the day. The tea might be necessary to function: while the Trappists and Benedictines (seem to) have an opportunity for at least seven hours of sleep per night, the Zen monks don't appear to have the opportunity for even four. That is certainly not the life for me.

Jitsugi was our final hakobi usucha practice for a while. (Tomorrow we start using tana.) The unlacquered kiri-makie hiranatsume from Friday's welcome chakai appeared in our mizuya. Today's omogashi was kashiwamochi (pictured), but we didn't eat them in our class since Hamana-sensei thought we could use some practice handling a higashi-bon (tray for dry sweets), so we took them home. Kashiwamochi is anko-filled mochi wrapped in an (inedible) oak leaf.

Today was rainy with a high of 77°F/25°C. It's not even the rainy season yet, and already our faces are dripping with sweat when its our turn in front of the brazier (furo). We'll be wearing lined kimono (awase) for the rest of the month, and I expect it's only going to get worse.

April 27

Last Wednesday morning's first lecture was by Hamana-sensei on the architecture of the tearooms at Gakuen, the school building where we (usually) have both our classroom lectures and our tearoom practice. The third floor of Gakuen is a large window-lined space that is usually covered with tatami mats—I'd guess over a hundred of them—but can also be converted to an auditorium for school-related ceremonies and such. The second floor includes several classrooms, a library, a reception room for guests, and a ryurei room for practicing temae that use tables and seats instead of tatami. The first floor includes an office space for school staff, a large kitchen, and six different eight-mat tea rooms, the first couple of which were the subject of this lecture. When you're in the first-floor tea room area, you'd never guess you were in a concrete building. The architect did a brilliant job of hiding the concrete pillars and providing a living dictionary of different tea room styles along with meeting the usual functional and aesthetic requirements for tea rooms.

Next on our schedule was a lecture by Yamamoto-sensei, the gyotei-sensei who had taught our senpai in tearoom practice the previous day. As we introduced ourselves, Yamamoto-sensei asked us questions about what interests us about chanoyu and used our answers as opportunities to talk about a range of topics from wagashi to the ceremonial role of sake in Japanese culture to the naturalist aesthetics favored by Japanese wabi-type tea people and Scandinavians. This discussion ended up taking the entire 80-minute lecture period, which I don't think Yamamoto-sensei originally intended but which was educational and interesting perhaps more than the original lecture material would have been.

In the afternoon, we practiced wakei with Hamana-sensei. Wakei is a procedure with lots of little movements to remember. The men in our class had practiced the night before, but June and I hadn't, citing a lack of practice space and appropriate utensils in our dorm. You could tell which of us had practiced. In retrospect I think we should have improvised with whatever we had on hand and used our own dorms rooms as practice space. I spent the whole afternoon feeling frustrated alternately about the womens' dorm lack of available practice resources and about my failure to deal with that lack productively instead of turning it into an excuse not to practice.


April 28

Thursday was ro-furo irekae, the day when the non-Midorikai students switch the tea rooms from the sunken hearth (ro) configuration to one in which a smaller brazier (furo) sits on top of the tatami mats. As a result, we had jitsugi in the morning at the large practice space in the men's dorm, which required some coordination as far as figuring out what items Midorikai had available there and what we needed to pick up from Gakuen (wagashi, flowers, charcoal, ash). We continued practicing wakei with Murata-sensei.

In the afternoon we Midorikai students did our part in the day's changeover by cleaning the second-floor classrooms just as we had earlier in the month, right after the school entrance ceremony. So we don't get an opportunity to see the actual procedures for closing out the ro and getting ready to use furo.

Since we finished cleaning earlier than we'd normally finish afternoon jitsugi, I had a little spare time during regular business hours to take a few of my kimono to a cleaner that reputedly does a decent job with them for not too much money. The kimono I took there were a crimson iromuji that's actually the first kimono I ever had (and which suffered a bit in the previous week's unexpected rain), a pink-and-gray komon kimono I picked up from the pile left behind by previous Midorikai students, the light green iromuji from Harajuku Chicago whose stain I found only after I'd bought it (and all sales there are final), and a nagajuban with a yellowed collar. The total was around 8400 yen; I can pick them up this Saturday (the Golden Week holidays slow things down a bit), so I'll see how good a job this cleaner does.


April 29

This was Shōwa no hi, so we had the day off from classes. I headed to Fushimi Inari-taisha to fulfill my years-old desire to walk the entire length of the place (about 4 km of trails, with a number of side-tracks). Although the areas closer to the main shrine were a little crowded, I didn't notice particularly more people there than I'd seen in the past on non-holidays, and in areas farther along the trail it wasn't unusual for me to be alone among a stand of mossy stone monuments (otsuka) and the calls of songbirds in the tree canopy above. I stopped for lunch at one of the trailside restaurants perched atop a steep hill and had my pick of tables, so I sat in the tatami area right beside one of the windows, where I enjoyed the feeling of being up in a treehouse as I ate my kitsune udon and inarizushi. A little later I stopped at an overlook for kinako soft-serve, thus doubling the number of new soft-serve flavors I've tried in the past month (others included honey-and-black-sesame and black soybean). I love the natural beauty at Fushimi Inari-taisha. There's one particular low area of otsuka where the evergreens are really tall and where a curious person can find an opening through some large stones where a small stream has been diverted into a waterfall in a sort of grotto. I don't know the name of this area because I was never really clear where I was on the trail with respect to the maps at any given time, but I'm sure I'll make a note of it when I return. On my way out of the shrine I got an omamori for success in my studies along with an omikuji that I couldn't read or interpret. Doh! Turns out its summary is 小凶後吉 (blessing after small curse), so I'm going to tie it to something at the next shrine I encounter. Here are my photos from Fushimi Inari-taisha.

When I got home I got in touch with Anna and we met up for dinner, but between our late start and our indecisiveness in choosing a restaurant, I ended up having to bail out partway through dinner to make my curfew. I'm going to be staying at her place for the next couple days of holidays to prevent that from happening again. :)


April 30

On Saturday I joined some of my classmates in the morning to help Matsunami-sensei with cleaning the garden at Ryosen-an, but we got there early enough for a session of zazen beforehand with about a dozen other people. It was a chilly morning, and the door to the zendo was left open, so I wished I'd worn another layer under my samue, but the chill ensured I didn't fall asleep. Cleaning the garden afterward was really difficult due to the tiny red somethings dropped by the Japanese maple trees onto the moss below. Have you ever tried sweeping moss? There's a fine line between sweeping too gently to make any progress and sweeping too vigorously so that the moss separates from the ground. It felt like an exercise in futility, but after making some progress our cleaning session was declared over and we gathered around a table for tea and conversation.

After returning to our dorms, changing from samue into normal clothes, and gathering some of our classmates who'd opted to sleep in, we wandered around our neighborhood looking for a place to eat lunch. Many places were closed, presumably for the holiday period. Eventually we found a hole-in-the-wall soba/udon shop where I had a satisfying 500-yen bowl of curry donburi. The rest of my day was rather slow, mostly involving napping and reading.


May 1

On Sunday I headed to a local department store to pick up some things for my room, including an electric kettle, a stepstool, and a wire rack shelf unit, the latter two of which I had delivered (for a quite reasonable fee of 450 yen) because I had no way to carry them home on the bicycle. I did a few other chores including cleaning the filter in my air conditioning unit and removing the shitsuke (basting thread) from the dark green iromuji kimono I picked up from the pile of leftovers in preparation for wearing it the next day. In the evening I met Anna for parfaits at Lipton and much wandering around along Teramachi and Shijo.


May 2

On Monday morning we first gathered in the genkan at Konnichian to receive our monthly stipends from Iemoto (the reason we had to wear the formal iromuji kimono). As we were waiting in line, right before we were announced to Iemoto, Daisosho came along and started peeling off bills from inside his pocket and giving them to us! Weird! But yay! But weird! But I'll take it. Scholarships and bonuses in hand, we reported to our classroom for a quiz on chitosebon and wakei. I think I did pretty well, but on a question about who formulated the wakei procedure, I didn't see Tantansai's name among the answers. I figured I must have misremembered who came up with it. Doh. Turns out Tantansai is also known as Mugensai, which was among the answers. Not the one I picked, though. Now I know.

Following the quiz was a lecture by Hamana-sensei on more May seasonal topics, including sweets (kudzu-starch sweets start to appear at the end of this month), flowers, and an event called shoburo that celebrates the beginning of the furo season. Hamana-sensei then went on to continue the Gakuen chashitsu lecture, covering the less formal tea rooms and the hallways.

Our afternoon jitsugi was hishaku warigeiko and hakobi usucha temae. For hishaku warigeiko we each needed to practice in front of a separate kettle and brazier setup, so we were up on the expansive third floor of Gakuen. The ambiance up there is much different from downstairs, what with all the light and the views and the space. Since the weather was mild, the windows were open somewhat, and the wind whistled through at times, creating a kind of rooftop-of-the-world Tibetan feeling. The day's wagashi was awarimochi, which at first glance you might mistake for kashiwamochi since it's enveloped in an oak leaf, but this awarimochi uses yomogi mochi instead of regular mochi.

April 18

Monday started with a weekly quiz. This one, for us newer students, was supposed to be on the basics of mizuya and the names of tearoom elements, though I don't remember any questions about the latter. The questions were not so much on the lecture material as on what we had been taught—or not taught—during afternoon practice, during which note-taking is difficult to impossible since it's forbidden in the tearoom. I think I did fairly well on the quiz; maybe I'll find out tomorrow, at which time we'll have another one.

Following the quiz all of the students filed into a large classroom to hear o-iemoto's (bi-monthly?) lecture. For the benefit of those of us who don't understand much Japanese, Hamana-sensei and Gary-sensei took turns simultaneously interpreting into English through a set of short-range radios, but even though we tested them beforehand the setup didn't work in practice, maybe because the microphone wasn't picking up the quiet voices they used so as not to disturb the lecture itself. So I didn't really understand o-iemoto's lecture. :( Afternoon practice was bonryaku. Uneventful. In the evening June and I shopped for things for the next day's mizuya mimai. She made poke (a hit) and inarizushi, I made panfried mochifu, and we added some grapes, edamame, and bottled green tea.

April 19

On Tuesday one of our senpai held his hango chaji, a type of chaji that takes place after the guests have already eaten, so the host only serves sweets and tea. The idea of doing this type of chaji is that it's somewhat manageable for someone at our level. Even so, as guests we helped out in various ways that normally would be covered by the host. In the morning we brought the mizuya mimai and cleaned several of the rooms in Chado Kaikan as well as the garden areas, where most of the work was picking up fallen bamboo leaves, since spring is "bamboo autumn". We didn't have time to do a really thorough job, since we needed to hurry back to the dorm to change into our formal kimono and then to the cafeteria to eat lunch.

After a lunch that actually ended up being less rushed than usual, we gathered at Chado Kaikan, quietly avoiding some meeting that Okusama was holding there at the same time, and made our way to the yoritsuki to remove our tabi covers and leave our belongings (and, in the men's case, to put on their hakama). And this is where I'll wave my hands for now, dear reader, because there is much to write about the chaji, and I should be getting some sleep. I hope to fill in this part before my memory of it fades too much. Feel free to pester me if I forget.

April 20

Wednesday morning's lecture was an introduction to chashitsu by Hamana-sensei, whose overview of the requirements and design constraints of chashitsu is informed by some architectural training. A chashitsu requires a number of facilities outside the tearoom itself, including places for the guests to change their tabi and leave their belongings (genkan/yoritsuki), gather and wait for the chaji to begin (machiai), calm down and prepare spiritually for the drinking of tea (koshikake machiai), purify themselves (tsukubai), and rest while the host prepares for the second half of the chaji (koshikake machiai again). And the host needs places to prepare utensils and food, including the heating of water and charcoal, and means to move between the garden, preparation room, and tearoom unseen by the guests. I was interested to hear also about the psychological impact a chashitsu should have on guests and the ideas of 'cocooning' (Hamana-sensei says the Japanese have a preference for small spaces, a preference that I suspect I share) and tranquilization through the control of stimuli.

For afternoon practice, our class had Hamana-sensei for the only time this week, but he was in a bad mood! He was particularly not interested in hearing comments about how our teachers back home taught us to do things differently from how he was teaching us. I'd been warned about this by my teacher back home and advised to adapt to whatever ways I was being taught at the time. Some of my classmates have a hard time, when they encounter the different way of doing something, keeping from commenting about the difference; I suppose my strong skill in inhibition serves me well here. :/ Still, we tried our best at bonryaku and avoided causing our teacher any further irritation.

April 21

Thursday morning's lecture was on rekidai by Gary-sensei. Rekidai refers to the successive generations of heads of Urasenke, from Sen no Rikyu to the present day. But this lecture just started with Rikyu and focused on utensils that he preferred or designed, including the Amidado kettle, Shigaraki ware pottery, chashaku with a node in the center, Rikyubashi (long, unlacquered wooden chopsticks tapered on both ends), shibugamide 渋紙手 utensils that mimic the color and texture of kakishibugami 柿渋紙 (paper treated with persimmon juice), and many more. One slide showed a glimmering image of Toyotomi Hideyoshi's gold-leaf-covered portable tea room in what I presume was an example of the kind of extravagance Rikyu was against.

Afternoon practice was more bonryaku, this time with Imagawa-sensei, whose grace and gentleness leaves us students in awe. He speaks with us in Japanese but is quick to switch to English when it's clear we're not understanding him.

April 22

Friday morning's lecture was on seasonal topics for May. I can tell this is going to be one of my favorite kinds of lecture. We covered flowers that appear in May, various poetic names for the month, the solar terms that occur in May, festivals and traditional events that occur in May, the tradition of beginning to pick tea leaves on the 88th day after Risshun, the Tokugawa-era procession of the shogun's tea jars from Uji to Edo, the processing of green tea, and the history and traditions of Children's Day.

I practiced chitosebon for first time in the afternoon. Chitosebon is a temae created by Tantansai's wife for his sixtieth birthday; in it the utensils are carried inside a circular lacquered black box similar in size and shape to a round hat box. This was our first session with Ro-sensei, one of the teachers who doesn't speak English, but he didn't say a great deal. We had looked at some reference materials beforehand so we had a rough idea of how the temae goes. At first it felt strange to be putting down my fukusa with my left hand, but when you're putting it down to your left, it's less awkward than the alternative.

That evening it was my turn to do haigata for my class—that is, to sculpt the ash formation for the brazier we'll use on Monday. The hour of time we have in the evenings at Gakuen is plenty of time for the cleaning chores but not nearly enough time for a newbie doing haigata, so after an hour's effort I put mine aside to finish over the weekend.

April 23

On Saturday morning June and I took advantage of a 50% off sale at Kitagawa, one of the local chadogu shops. We picked up chitosebon-sized kobukusa, and I fixed myself up with a gorgeous chabako set, the box made of unlacquered wood cut with a watery motif. We treated one of our senpai to a gourmet shojin-ryori lunch at Izusen for helping us with the evening cleaning chores even though the senpai are not obligated to do them (a subject of some controversy). He in turn treated us to aburimochi at Ichiwa. If that last sentence sounds familiar, that's the same place where Kido-san treated me to aburimochi last weekend. I'm so lucky! On the way back to our respective dorms we stopped at a ceramics gallery on Kitaoji-dori with some really funky but expensive pieces.

April 24

This morning I spent 2.5 more hours on my first haigata. Gah. The end state for this kind of thing, at my stage of learning, is not so much "finished" as "given up".

June and I headed downtown afterward for a tenzarusoba lunch at 鶴喜そば and secondhand kimono shopping at Chicago. I got a couple of kimono, one of them a light green iromuji that might in retrospect need some cleaning, and a couple of obi to match. We were not quite sure about the distinction between summer (July/August) and non-summer obi, so we stuck with ones we're pretty sure are of the latter type. We walked around the basement food floor of Takashimaya a bit, but by then we were exhausted from the heavy bags, hordes of people, and rain outside, so we took a bus back to our neighborhood. A nap was really tempting, but I stopped in at Tsuruya Yoshinobu instead for namagashi and bowl of usucha, and that carried me through the rest of the evening, including a nice video Skype chat with my parents. Thank goodness for in-room Internet access.