Dear wonderful readers, today I had the wonderful opportunity to visit the Boston Children's Museum, at which I was a guest for a class held by Urasenke Boston. This is an organization dedicated to the Japanese Tea Ceremony-- something I have a great interest in (please see the "Tea Ceremony" category to the right of this webpage). The Boston Children's Museum has a phenomenal exhibit called The Japanese House, a traditional-style house brought piece by piece from Kyoto, Japan! It was the whole deal: tatami (rush straw) floors, with sliding doors and a zen garden. See more photos in my photo gallery! It is here that Japanese Tea Ceremony classes are held, because it is a great opportunity to have the class in such a traditional setting.
The first thing we did was to come in, and place our shoes on a shoe rack outside of the room. A thing about Japanese culture: NEVER KEEP YOUR SHOES ON INSIDE. Total nono.
One of the first things the teacher explained was the beautiful display in the room.
Let's start with the Calligraphy depicted above. This Zen phrase reads: matsu ni kokon no iro nashi, roughly translating to "in the past, currently, and in the future, the pine tree will be green in color." A beautiful saying touching on important ideas of nature, passage of time, and color.
The flowers are also a huge part of the presentation. The arrangement (depicted on the left as well as above) consists of the flowers chrysanthemum (yellow), stonecrop(pink), and agrimony(long, with tiny red flowers if you can see!). The sensei (teacher) described the arrangement for tea ceremony to be different from the generic Japanese flower arrangement, which is structured for the purpose of aesthetic appeal. For tea ceremony, it should be the style of no ni aru hana (flowers in the field), or as natural as possible. It's also important to mention how the flowers in the room are a "living calendar," indicating the season. |
Then the class began. Because I used to take lessons as a beginner student, it was interesting to observe the more advanced tea ceremony procedures. There were definitely different tools used:
The container used to hold the matcha powder is the hirachaire (flat tea containter). This is a generic term-- specifically, this type of container is called the taikai. As you can see, it is very beautiful. The lid is made of ivory, with gold underneath.
The bag holding the container is called the shifuku, which has a very particular tying/untying process. This seemed to be the most difficult part of the advanced level.
There was also a cylindrical okama (iron pot to hold the hot water), along with a mizusashi (the brown cylindrical container that holds fresh cold water).
Always my favorite part, we also received quite a bit of okashi (Japanese sweets) today, along with tea. Although I was only an observer, I was generously provided with a serving of both.
The first we received was the tsuki-mi dango, literally translated to "moon-viewing" dango (sweet rice-paste balls). The colors of this "genre" of dango tend to be white or yellow, whereas hana-mi (flower-viewing)dango tends to be pink in color.
As an extra, we were also given some of the moon-cakes the sensei made, which was filled with anko (sweet bean paste you can see), and matsu no mi (pine nuts).
It was impressive to see advanced students accomplish complicated movements that I had never seen before, like turning the chaire to gently pour some of the matcha powder into the bowl (below).
They were also so knowledgable about all of their tools! They could name the maker, design, and the title of the tools laid out below:
Today was an amazing experience. It's crazy how much you can learn in a single day. I hope you enjoyed today's comeback episode of my Japanese Tea Ceremony series! Please stay tuned for more :)
Best,
justajae
Best,
justajae