Iwashimizu

Finally, our first kenchashiki (a ritual tea offering). We went to Iwashimizu, a shrine on Otokoyama--male mountain. I made incessant jokes about how weird it was to be going to Man Mountain, but no one seemed to think it was as hilarious as I did.
There turned out to be FOUR bowls of tea and sweets waiting for us on the top of man mountain.  First, watching the kencha. It was in here:

We had front row seats, except behind all the Shinto guys and right next to the bugaku guys and the Odaiko -- the really really really big drum. So big that before the event started, the Shinto guy who bangs it came out and apologized to everyone that it was going to be loud.  It was loud, and I turned back to watch him just in time to see Mika dai-sempai (Mika, who is a Finnish grad of Midorikai currently in the one-year course and therefore sempai to our sempai) and a few others jump in their seats when it sounded a second time.
It's lucky the Shinto guys (and one girl) who had the seats in front of us wear interesting outfits because after they sat down we could really see nothing else.

Here we all are, taking pictures before the event starts. Lindsey is using her invisible camera.

So, the ceremony begins and the kamisama get all kinds of gifts given to them on matching red elevated trays, including sake, a big gorgeous fish, huge cakes of mochi, a tray full of vegetables, a tray full of fruits, and then a tray full of little sugar sweets of the same kind that we would get to eat later. They are passed along by the Shinto guys, starting with Shinto girl, then guy to guy to guy, and eventually they disappear inside the shrine, like a fire bucket brigade of nice foods.
Then o-iemoto (grand master) goes up to the platform in the front and makes tea. At the key moment when tea is about to go in the bowl, he puts on a face mask, to avoid breathing on anything that will go to the shrine. When the tea is done, he hands it off and the head Shinto guy takes it into the shrine.

Okay, after about 45 minutes of waiting in our seats, then 30 minutes of ceremonialness, it's time for the tea for mere mortals. We have a long sheet of tickets that guarantee our entry into all the events.

Olya models our slip of tickets to all the events.

First up, the haifuku seki, where we have the same tea and sweets as were used in the initial demonstration.

Linda reveals how big these trays really are...

These are pretty delicious higashi, with a brown sugar interior.

Our gakuensei (Japanese student) colleagues from Urasenke were serving the tea at this seating, just at tables near the shrine.

Now off to the lower area of the complex where gakuensei were also hosting an outdoor nodate seating. We got booted from our assigned seating by the arrival of the iemoto and family, so we went off to eat our tenshin soba lunch (Tenshin is "sky-heart"-- what a nice and nonsensical thing to call a tiny lunch. Or I think that's the kanji. I can't quite remember now...)

Now we entered the wrong seating for the outdoor seating because we'd been unable to enter our assigned one earlier. So we were a bit crowded:

As you can see, although he watched nothing, Hamana-sensei still got good service from Miyazaki-san (3 year at Gakuen). Sitting at the back of this seating was awesome for kimono observation:

I don't have one of these kimono bags. This outdoor seating was lighthearted, with this cool cartoony futaoki, and a big childlike bowl made by Ennosai.

It was the day before October, so they had a wacky pod for a flower:

Fruits and seeds and non-flower flowers are considered appropriate for October, nagori season-- when we use everything up, so things are old and worn and patched and so on. It is obviously the awesomest time of the year.



Then we went to the honseki (the main seating); only the boys from Gakuen can serve at the honseki, which I am not too cool with, but it's not up to me. The honseki seated about 30 people in two rows, and it was in a spectacular old wooden building, with the outer edge wall of windows hanging out over a drop with trees and greenery all around. In the tokonoma there was a scroll by Ito (!!! 8th generation iemoto!) which said Yama wa yobu, bansai koe. (The mountains call "bansai," referring to the old Chinese tradition of going out into the mountains to shout blessings on the emperor where they will reverberate and echo.) Nice for a building on a mountain hanging over the edge of an abyss. (Okay, so there was a parking lot down there if you looked straight down, but looking out was awesome.)
No pictures in there, but here's the extra space they added to the garden for accommodating everyone's shoes outside:

And now, we saunter down the long path to the fuku seki, in the wacky hotel building:

This seating, in a big tatami room in the basement of the weird hotel, had some really really nice dogu (utensils)-- although (and I hadn't realized this before coming here) the really nice stuff, bowls and chashaku and things, are just displayed and not used. You can look at them in the waiting room, and then totally other really-nice-but-not-as-nice-as THAT stuff is used to actually make tea. There is an interesting surrogation, performance studies thing going on there... Of the actually-used items, what really stands out in my memory is that there was a gorgeous Chinese basket, very intricately woven, with a whopping 9 different types of flowers. They used a fabulous yatsure buro nakaoki, which is an old iron brazier that is so old that its top is rusted away and so you have to add a stand (gotoku) inside to hold your kettle out of the fire. This is super nagori for October, and totally awesome for me with my obsession with recycling.
Hamana sensei ended up shoukyaku (first guest) and did a nice job getting the stories of all the items from the host.
One thing that I didn't appreciate until afterward when we were looking at everything again was the Nintokusai futaoki-- bamboo with maki-e designs added. Totally gorgeous and understated.

Thus concluded, we all gathered upstairs at the weird chrysanthemum couch,

got ourselves in order, got our stuff and the boys changed out of their fancy pants *in public*. [I will not repost the picture here, even though it is totally awesome.] Then back down the cable car

and then, because it was still early (only like 3pm or so) some of us took a little trip to Gion where we saw a real live Maiko and were ourselves obsessively photographed by passersby as we wandered the streets.
But we weren't above photographing ourselves either:

Big day. One of many to come.