Tea Ceremony

Recently, I’ve been getting very involved in my tea ceremony class. I really like it! It was always a goal of mine to practice the tea ceremony in Japan since I practiced it back in the U.S. for two and a half years. It’s been over six months since I started practicing again in Japan. There were two main events related to my tea class recently.

First, I went to my first real tea ceremony as a guest. It was a lot different than I imagined. I always imagined a tiny tea house in a garden of a temple; very intimate with one tea maker and around 4 guests. This scenario is true of the past and possibly for rich people today, but these days, large groups of people will come to a temple to watch a tea ceremony. It costs around 2,500 yen to attend.  I watched two or three different performances. We were in very large rooms in a temple in Kyoto. Guests could wear kimono or formal western clothing.  There were about 20-30 guests watching one person make tea. It was fun and interesting, but not what I was expecting. It was less formal than I thought it would be.

My Japanese tea ceremony teacher.

Second, I actually performed my first real tea ceremony in the same temple!! I was SO nervous! I thought I would for sure mess up. I was the last to perform of my classmates. It was the same set up as before. I performed in a large room full of about 20-30 people. I was in full kimono all day. It was so hot! It was a very good experience, though. All of the guests were surprised to see a foreigner serving them tea and okashi (Japanese sweets) haha, let alone perform a ceremony! One of the best things was that my American tea ceremony teacher who is living in Tokyo now came all the way to Kyoto for the day just to watch me perform! I hadn’t seen her in like over two years! I was so happy and excited! She sat in the 2^nd position of honor so she was very close to me when I perform. The main guest of honor was an old man. My friends warned me before I performed, saying that the old man was a “talker.” They were not wrong. He was really distracting and kept asking me questions in Japanese and asking if I understood while I performed. He said, “Wow, this is the first time I’ve been served by a foreigner!”  I just tried to channel him out like I was instructed to. I ended up doing my ceremony perfectly for the first time! I was so proud of myself!

Kimono time!

My previous teacher came to watch! So happy!

Me performing!

Afterwards, my American teacher and spent some time together. We walked around Kyoto a bit and browsed the shops. We went to this really nice traditional Japanese style restaurant that specializes in yuudofu (basically tofu in hot water that you dip into sauce and put other things on top). We sat on cushions at a low table with a view of a beautiful Japanese garden out the window. She treated me to dinner. I felt so gracious seeing as she came all the way to see me (shinkansen (bullet train) tickets aren’t cheap), gave me gifts, and took me out to dinner. I don’t know how I can ever return the favor! She said that getting to see one of her past students move to Japan and continue practicing the tea ceremony and perform at a real tea ceremony was gift in itself. She said she thoroughly enjoyed watching me. At dinner, she picked my brain about ideas on how to run her class better when she returns to America. I still feel like I owe her so much. She was the one who wrote me a letter of recommendation for the JET Programme to begin with. I’m sure that because of her, I am able to be in Japan now.

Garden view.

Yuudofu.

Teishoku (meal set).