Thursday, 1 July: Tea Ceremony and Flower Arranging

After meeting with my late morning class I met up with everyone at a traditional Japanese house, complete with sliding doors and straw mat type floor coverings, where I ate a bento box meal (small lacqured dishes of fish, radish salad, miso soup, the never-ending white rice and something that looked like dead worms in pepto bismol sauce, all fitted nicely in one big lacqured box)and was dressed in a beautiful purple kimono. It took two people to dress me. There were yards and yards of silver material wrapped around me and I was wearing two undergarments made especially for under the kimono, not to mention I was trussed up like the proverbial Christmas Goose in order to flatten out my ever-expanding Buddha Belly (thanks to the rice..... and no, Melissa, Sake does NOT counteract the effects!)and any other curves I possessed. At one point Ms. Hanayagi put her knee in my belly and wrapped her arms around me and pulled hard, in order to tighten up all of the strings or scarves or whatever they were to hold me in. I had already bought some tabbi (spelling?) which are the special sox/booties with one toe separated from the rest of the toes to wear. Mine had a type of sole on them, but there were still very slippery. I had to walk one foot in front of the other. Unfortunately, I was too late to have my formal picture taken in my kimono outside in the beautiful Japanese gardens, so they took a nice picture of me in my street clothes instead.

Unfortunaely, I missed the dance lessons. Emily, Lauren and Masumi all did the traditional Japanese dance in their kimonos, and I was told involved squatting down some, which was rather difficult given the kimono. Then there were some specific foot movements which represented various Japanese characters. The sensae said that to learn the Japanese way of dancing was to learn pain, and that it took three years to really learn how to dance properly. Still, I was sorry to miss this.

The tea ceremony went well. It was really more of a lesson than an actual performance. And we were told that it takes at least three months to correctly learn the tea ceremony. I was rather nervous about it but everyone was relaxed and understood that we were novices. I learned how to properly make the tea by adding the right amount of loose ground green tea to the bowl, adding a dipper full of hot water and whisking it with a bamboo whisk until my arm fell off. When it finally foamed it was ready. This seemed to take about an hour, but in reality it was more like a few minutes. Lauren was the best at getting it frothy. I never got the hang of correctly ladling the water, though, but I did manage to correctly do the two clockwise turns of the bowel and present it to the guest. I also learned how to properly take the sweets (which were surprisingly not all that sweet despite the fact that they looked like they would rot your teeth out in a heartbeat) and eat them in the correct way, from the left side first, and how to appreciate the tea bowl once I had finished with my tea. This appreciate of the tea bowl involved getting on my knees and analyzing it from every angle, smelling it and admiring it. In addition, while drinking the tea I excelled at making the appropriate slurping noises, which was fun. Fortunately I did not have to be on my knees the whole time, as I was not able to move very freely given my wrappings. We were given low benches to sit on. I am impressed at how those Japanese women stayed on their knees the entire time without shifting to sit on their hips like I had to do when I wasn’t on the bench.
I guess I had better increase my yoga exercises.
Emily and Lauren wore Kimonos that had very long sleeves, plus their obi's had a butterfly bow in the back, each signifying they were single. Us married women had less elaborate Kimonos, more subdued colors, less decoration, and no butterfly bow. I did have a bigger "bustle" type of apparatus stuck on my backside, which reminded me of a bustle, which signified I was a guest of honor.
Masumi said that both the tea ceremony and the art of the Kimono were not taught as much to young women as in the past.