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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Paivi and Linda modelling kimono-cleaning fashions. |
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| My own kimono apron (from Kazue in Matsuyama) | and himo. |
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| Sarah makes an apron from a shawl. |
