Fail [Better] Blog: Welcome Hango Chaji- September 24, 2012

Welcome hango chaji

This is Shinka no ma, the tea room in which we had our first chaji last Monday. It was the welcome-to-Midorikai chaji for us “Ichi-A”s, and the first hosted by our sempai, the “Ichi-B”s or “Ichi-bees” as Damian put it. There was some stress leading up to the big day, with all the preparations to be made and secrets to be kept from us, but I think on the day we all were able to more or less relax and enjoy ourselves… after cleaning all the parts of Chado Kaikan we’d be using. So we actually all showed up, even guests, in the morning to do a thorough cleaning, and after it was over, we stayed on in kimono and cleaned everything again. But in between, the ichi-a’s had time to go change into kimono and eat lunch, then it was the big moment. An especially big moment for me because I was assigned the shoukyaku role (first guest). This is probably because I am so old. The oldest student (although we are really not too far apart in age— a couple years each or so). Conveniently, I’m the oldest person here, the first in alphabetical order, and the one who has studied the longest. I hope that I am not ever acting like a know-it-all, although I do worry from time to time. (Being kouhai has really made me realize just how much of a “leader” I am. I can say that with confidence now in a job interview: I am a leader. And in case this could also be a weakness--I think it is, then I will also be able to say I just spent six months rigorously fighting down my leadership urges. Failing, but trying again.--natch.)
Anyway, Machiai (waiting room) was another 8 mat room with an empty tabakobon (tabako tray), red mosen felt to sit on, and a fan by iemoto on display. The gist of the fan (I’ll have to get the complete reading again from a sempai) was about working together. This is good because we all have to work together all day every day, and not getting along would be disastrous. Most of our concerns are really over our fellow students (of course, some of them are selfish because we feel responsible also for each other’s mistakes or moods.) The tabakobon is basically never used anymore (there’s no pipes or tobacco in them, but the little coal is still lit, as if I might light up an invisible pipe), but it sits in the more lighthearted rooms as a sign now of the lightness. I thought the tabakobon in the machiai was ironic because it had six hisago and was a pun on “mubyo” —which means either 6 hisago (gourds) or “no sickness.” It’s a wish for health on a tray meant for tobacco smoking. Or maybe that’s not ironic at all. Maybe that’s exactly where you need some help.
We had osayu, hot water, in the machiai, served by Olya. This is our taste of the water to be used for tea, to taste its quality. We learned later that the water was from Nashinoki jinja, one of the three famous wells in Kyoto, which was a real thrill because we’d just been there for the Hagi matsuri chakai, but the well was closed because there would have been too great a demand. It turned out actually that the sempai hadn’t known there’s a liters-per-visit limit and they got yelled at by the jinja-san when trying to fill up their big container at 6am on chaji day. But it was nice for us, since we’d been unable to taste it two days before.
Then we went out to our version of koshikake machiai (the bench outdoor waiting area). It’s actually the table-room for making tea with the sliding doors open to the garden. We wait for the host to fill the handwashing basin, then come bow to us (we stand when he comes into view and bow back.) Then one by one we wash our hands and mouths, and then off to the tea room for sumi (charcoal) and a sweet. Charcoal is an incredible luxury, and now that we cut the charcoal for school once a month, maybe I appreciate it more— or maybe it makes me want to run through the rooms shouting PUT THAT DOWN! DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG I SPENT CUTTING AND POLISHING THAT!? AND YOU’RE JUST GOING TO **BURN** IT!?!?!? [more on sumi when I can get to it.] [[new editor's note: ha ha, look I finished the other entry first.]] Whatever I may want to do, it’s going to be burned now, so let’s appreciate it and watch the laying of the fire carefully. Wonderful byakudon incense is added from a Russian bent-bark container with a butterfly and jewel on top and then we have our sweet— a painfully cute and lifelike bunny (for the rabbit in the moon associated with September).
Then back out to the machiai for a rest—what struck me this time was what a luxury it is to sit around quietly and do nothing in the middle of the afternoon on a week day. Really any time, but especially then. And we are training in how to orchestrate events for people to sit around! This is our job! Sometimes our job includes practicing sitting and doing nothing ourselves. The garden was still and a bit overcast. There was a huge hagi plant (one of the 7 flowers of autumn! it’s probably 6 feet tall, but feathery and this with long pink blooms, weed like) near the entrance to the machiai, so being first I sat and saw each of the other guests enter, and realized that that hagi was extremely insistent on being noticed— it brushed the sleeve of pretty much everyone who came by. Just before they rang the gong for us to come back for tea, a small yellow breasted songbird zoomed in and alighted on a far branch near the back wall of the garden.
Then back to tsukubai to wash hands and into the room, where one single gorgeous pink flower (fuyo, I think) was hanging from the wall in the center of the tokonoma (see the first picture). The choice of the small hanging vase and a single flower might not have been recommended for such a large tokonoma (larger than standard) but I thought it looked amazing against the wide expanse of rough wall, emphasizing both the patina of the building and the lush luxuriousness of the flower which was so open it would gild the lily to add any more (usually we prefer not-totally-open flowers in the tea room, but again I thought the simplicity of the arrangement made the full bloom seem perfectly pitched.)
Then tea, using the Yoshino-dana which is really gorgeous— a stand with a big round cut out mimicking the teahouse window of the famous tea-lady Yoshino. Framed perfectly—for me, since I was positioned directly opposite it, as shoukyaku) inside was a white diamond shaped mizusashi (cold water container) by Richard Milgram, who I happen to know in Boston. What I hadn’t actually realized was that he’s a Midorikai grad. He’s a pretty big time potter for Japanese and tea style ceramics these days.
The chaire was inside a pale whitish shifuku which seemed just right because Aliisa made koicha, and she has not only blonde hair, but a very recognizable style in and out of kimono with lots of linen and cream colors. Aliisa did Kasanejawan—two bowls of koicha—since there were 7 of us drinking. The inner was a matte black raku (in the style of the early generations) and the second was a completely enormous white rough bowl of Mike’s. Heavy and crazy and cool. I’m glad we’d run through this part because there were a few weird timing things about it, and tsuzukiusucha, which is leading directly from thick to thin tea without adding more charcoal in the middle. So Aliisa traded with Lindsey, who did the usucha out of a hilarious natsume tea container. On the outside it was a simple black with a nice, understated silver design of susuki grasses. I thought it had a speck resting on it, and was painfully tempted to brush it off when I looked at it at the beginning, but knowing it was bad form to touch the things as a guest, I left it— and was glad I did when we finally handed them around— the specks sticking to it that had bothered me so much turned out to be silvery dots of dew on the the grasses. And even wilder, on the inside of the natsume lid, there was a big full gold moon with two cartoony bunnies watching it. Totally unexpected inside such a subtly decorated natsume. The first bowl was a nubbly white mystery bowl from the Midorikai store and no one really knows anything about it and the second bowl was yellowy with a motif of a heavy rice stalk ready to be harvested. The kazujawan, the matching later bowls, were super cool— bold cartoony waves, complete with black specks of spray. We liked them a lot, but Hamana-sensei didn’t seem so into them. He told us they are from an old chakai that had a thousand people in Tokyo, and they own something like 50 of these bowls. It seemed he had mainly memories of how much work that chakai was; he started to come around though, after our enthusiasm, even commenting that they looked good from the bottom up, the wave pattern was very pleasing when viewed in its entirety from upside down.

Linda makes it out alive.

After haiken of the chaire, chashaku (an iemoto chashaku called kagura, which is a folk performance form, so good because several of us are into performance--me, obvs, but also Damian who is a musician and Mike who does Noh), natsume, and shifuku, we all had goodbye aisatsu with Lindsey. Everyone said nice things to each other about the coming year and working hard and feeling welcomed and all that, then we each took our leave one by one (me first of course) although then I had to wait on a special out of the way stone so I could be the closest to the door when we all bowed to say goodbye to our host and then let ourselves out via the garden.

Lindsey seeing us off.

Because this was still class, we then all reconvened in the machiai space to hear what the teachers had to say by way of critique. Mostly critique was good. I thought everything was pretty great. The only thing I really noted toriawase (selection of utensils) wise is that there were an awful lot of white things. White's nice. It started to sort of be a theme of its own. It might be fun to do a white chaji sometime. (I already happen to know of someone who's been planning a black chaji for years.)

And THEN, because this was still class, we all had to put on our aprons and tie up our sleeves and re-clean every room we used that day, which means I cleaned on my hands and knees the room called Ho-un three times in about 5 hours. Plus several other rooms and hallways and I figured out where the carpet roller is stored upstairs and so on and so forth.