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akujunkanToday is one of those great days that kicked off well and just kept getting better, which was exactly what I needed to remind why I like this country so much after all.
I was invited to a tea ceremony last week by the principal of one of the kindergartens where I teach English. I wasn't too keen on it as I'd been up drinking until 3:30 this morning, but I woke up, but it was a chance to wear a pretty skirt and take a walk to the venue (the international center), so I headed off with a decent attitude.
The tea ceremony itself was kickass. The center architects had squirreled a bunch of traditional tatamibeya in the moddish building (think I.M. Pei without the glass ceilings). Anyway, it reminded me what I love so much about traditional Japanese culture, be it the tea ceremony, zazen, or noh - the fact that it forces you to sit and not worry about doing a hundred other things.
I'd participated in a quasi-tea ceremony twice before, so I knew what to expect, but today's ceremony was conducted by a completely different school - we ate the candies before drinking the tea, there were two opportunities to drink tea in separate rooms, and there was much more dialogue between the (distinguished) participants.
The otoko scroll was penned by the head abbot of Daitokuji (which I've visited), and they used several utensils passed down from the Tokugawa shoguns, by which I learned that the people conducting this ceremony were the Real Deal. The kimono were pretty, the ogashi were good, and the incense was nice. Most importantly of all, I got to speak loads of Japanese with old Japanese ladies. It's funny, but my Japanese is much better when talking to people two or three decades older than myself; I can speak polite Japanese fairly well thanks to my education, but come off sounding either too polite or too masculine when talking to kids my own age.
On the way back home I ran into one of the cooler members from my cooking workshops. Apparently a station-to-station relay marathon was being held throughout the prefecture, and I'd arrived just in time to see the runners heading from the next station toward our own. As this meant lots of young factory workers in booty shorts I stayed around to watch for about an hour.
You can really sort of see the transmission of tea culture/old culture attitude in these sorts of events. Everyone is dressed up in event-appropriate clothes; the officials in the ambulance, head, tail, and judging cars are all wearing hats, sashes and white gloves. The Japanese love to take stuff so seriously. A lot of times it can really get on your nerves (like when you're trying to get on with Life), but in other instances, it's kind of endearing.
That will be all.
I was invited to a tea ceremony last week by the principal of one of the kindergartens where I teach English. I wasn't too keen on it as I'd been up drinking until 3:30 this morning, but I woke up, but it was a chance to wear a pretty skirt and take a walk to the venue (the international center), so I headed off with a decent attitude.
The tea ceremony itself was kickass. The center architects had squirreled a bunch of traditional tatamibeya in the moddish building (think I.M. Pei without the glass ceilings). Anyway, it reminded me what I love so much about traditional Japanese culture, be it the tea ceremony, zazen, or noh - the fact that it forces you to sit and not worry about doing a hundred other things.
I'd participated in a quasi-tea ceremony twice before, so I knew what to expect, but today's ceremony was conducted by a completely different school - we ate the candies before drinking the tea, there were two opportunities to drink tea in separate rooms, and there was much more dialogue between the (distinguished) participants.
The otoko scroll was penned by the head abbot of Daitokuji (which I've visited), and they used several utensils passed down from the Tokugawa shoguns, by which I learned that the people conducting this ceremony were the Real Deal. The kimono were pretty, the ogashi were good, and the incense was nice. Most importantly of all, I got to speak loads of Japanese with old Japanese ladies. It's funny, but my Japanese is much better when talking to people two or three decades older than myself; I can speak polite Japanese fairly well thanks to my education, but come off sounding either too polite or too masculine when talking to kids my own age.
On the way back home I ran into one of the cooler members from my cooking workshops. Apparently a station-to-station relay marathon was being held throughout the prefecture, and I'd arrived just in time to see the runners heading from the next station toward our own. As this meant lots of young factory workers in booty shorts I stayed around to watch for about an hour.
You can really sort of see the transmission of tea culture/old culture attitude in these sorts of events. Everyone is dressed up in event-appropriate clothes; the officials in the ambulance, head, tail, and judging cars are all wearing hats, sashes and white gloves. The Japanese love to take stuff so seriously. A lot of times it can really get on your nerves (like when you're trying to get on with Life), but in other instances, it's kind of endearing.
That will be all.