On Sunday, I was invited to an actual tea ceremony session at a respected Sadou (tea ceremony) Sensei's house. ZARA performed the ceremony! She did a really good job! I was impressed. :) So, because I am part of the sadou club at school, I knew what was going on during the actual tea part, but there is so much more that I was unaware of before hand. We were in 4 different places and overall it took about 2 hours. Crazy, huh?
To begin, we gathered around and drank ume (plum) tea. It was amazingly refreshing and soothing. I have never had tea like that before. Then, we went outside to the garden to do the "cleansing of the hands" ritual. Basically we took turns walking over to the pot of water and ladled water into our hands. First the left, then the right, then with the left hand, you put the water up to your mouth and let it fall before it actually touches your lips. If there is any water left in the ladle, then you have to pour it out by letting it drip down the handle. Afterward, we went back to the room where we started and waited our turn to go into the actual tea room to admire and look at the scroll, the bowl holding the water, and the kettle. Once we all paid our respects to the beautiful decorations, we got ready for the tea. The sweets they gave us were so sweet and mochi-liscious. The tea was great, too! Plus, all the keigo-laced Japanese Zara was spurting out was amazing! Oh, and let me tell you. They had these little chairs that they let us use for sitting seiza and it worked like a charm; but I think I was the only one that could feel (without pain) the bottom half of our bodies. Oh seiza...why must you be so painful?!
Ok, so here are some pictures. Enjoy!
The beautiful Shawna in a kimono. I wish I got to wear one, too! This kimono belonged to the mother (or was it grandmother?) of one of the ladies at the ceremony and it was actually THE day that her mother(/grandmother) had died. I'm sure the lady was glad to see it being worn so elegantly!
Zara Sensei, you are so gorgeous in your kimono! Iinaa!!
Everyone at the tea ceremony. Aren't the kimonos beautiful? I really want one...maybe I should look into buying one (at least a nice yukata -- cotton kimono) before I leave. The lady in the green kimono (in the center) is Nishikawa Sensei, the teacher of all the ladies in kimono (except Shawna). She is actually a descendant of the Omura family and this is why she gets to live in this sweet house. (The wall is actual castle ruins and the rock garden in the back of her house is over 400 years old! Yes Tim, this is the house that we inspected that was down the narrow road. :D)
Sensei's hina dolls -- specially made in Kyoto. They are really beautiful!
A picture of the dolled up ones in front of the 400 year old rock garden. The cool guy in the middle is Erick, a 5th year ALT. He invited all the other ALTs over to his apartment for TACOS. And he had REAL flour tortillas :) Oh, it was good! ;)
Yay for sadou! One of my JTEs told me that I am becoming more Japanese than she is -- haha, I doubt that...but I really do enjoy the ceremony (minus the pain of sitting seiza...but it gets better with practice!).
I dont know what you are talking about on my blog. The last post wasn't my new movie idea. Even though I would love to put that in one of my ideas, but I just can't build a story on it. LOL
O well, I do have a new movie idea I was going to wait and put it on my blog when it was a little better. I've only had it in my
mind for about 3 days now, but if you want to read my first short plot summary then go to the site I put as my url if you can. :)
{8(1) Homer LOL thanks for showing me that. LOL
Posted by: Mark | February 10, 2007 at 07:34 AM