Another break from the lecture-lunch-practice norm today, because we’d been invited to a chakai hosted by the 3rd-year Japanese students. So we started the day with practice in our auxiliary space up in the women’s dorm while the gakuensei (Japanese students) cooked and cleaned and prepared.
Tana of the Day: sugidana. (Literally: cedar shelf.) Much like the others, except that it has a sliding center shelf that must be slid forward and back to get at the mizusashi sitting below it. Not worth the trouble, in my untutored opinion.
After lunch the Midorikai men dashed back to the dorm to put on hakama. I doubt I can do better than my Japanese dictionary, which defines hakama as “man’s formal divided skirt,” though it does raise the possibly insoluble question of where the line is that separates divided skirts from giant pants. Anyhow, hakama are expensive swaths of pleated fabric that you step into from the top; the seam dividing the skirt pulls the bottom of your kimono up and restores some of your mobility. We only get to wear them for formal occasions, which is sort of a pity, because despite the extra hassle, they look really good. The top edge covers the obi almost completely, and four long fabric ties crisscross around the waist and hips to secure the thing. And then all you have to worry about is stepping on the bottom hem when standing up from seiza, which will happen.
We approached the school again to see the concrete and asphalt outside being watered down in our anticipation of our arrival. In the ideal setting, of course, guests would approach the tearoom through a garden path, which would be likewise sprinkled with water to give a cool, fresh feeling, but tea practice also boasts an ethic of making do with what’s available, and I found charm in the treatment of our unremarkable little urban side street.
We waited in the first floor of the shokudō with the other guests for the chakai, the Japanese 1-year course students, until being summoned. Hamana-sensei explained to us the gifts that guests at such events customarily bring: something edible for the behind-the-scenes helpers in the mizuya, and cash (in uncirculated bills, of course) to help defray the cost of the function. The bills should be put into an envelope with their fronts forward; the envelope can be handed over in a variety of classy ways: on an opened fan, in the fold of a kobukusa, wrapped in a small furoshiki with the folds arranged carefully in a manner traditionally said to prevent good luck from falling out the bottom of the package.
Then we filed across the street to the school building and signed a guest book with brush and ink–as if my Japanese handwriting using familiar media weren’t embarrassing enough. Past the entranceway where we took off our zori and left our bags, the tea rooms where we spend so much time had been made almost unrecognizable. Portable folding walls hid service hallways and mizuya from sight, and the sliding doors separating rooms 5 and 6 had been taken away to create one large, long room to serve first as our waiting place, or machiai.
On the far end of the room, in room 6’s tokonoma, hung a scroll with a spirited painting of the god Shōki, expeller of demons and protector against disease and misfortune, and guardian of children–if I’ve got my facts straight. Here he looked less fearsome than robust and heartily amused: a distant cousin to Dickens’s Ghost of Christmas Present, perhaps, sitting with his hands on his thighs and his head tossed back. (Not that I’d swear to the accuracy of my memory of the thing.) In room 5’s toko hung a simpler scroll, with energetic calligraphy that read katsu, according to Hamana-sensei–though which of the many katsus in the language it was, he didn’t say. (And I didn’t think to ask.)
The tabakobon was a tray of unlacquered wood decorated with cut-outs in the tsubotsubo pattern that the Sen family uses as a sub-crest; on it sat a hiire I never got a good look at and don’t remember any secondhand information about either. While we waited, small portions of hot (well, warm, anyhow) water flavored with what I took to be dried plum were served to us in tiny cups of blue and white sometsuke porcelain in which what might have been plum blossoms floated. (If they were, in fact, perhaps they’d been preserved dry; those blossoms were gone from the trees before I arrived here. Anyhow, I liked the effect. Very fūryū.) While we drank our osayu, one of the 3rd-year students sat in the room as hantō, or helper, and held forth on the dōgu.
After which the doors at the west end of the room were opened to reveal that rooms 3 and 4 had been combined just as 5 and 6 had, to make space for the honseki–the main seating. The items displayed in the tokonoma gave us our first overt indicators of the chakai’s theme. (After Hamana-sensei had explained them to us, that is.) At the heart of the theme was an old legend holding that a lowly fish who could swim upstream past three waterfalls would be transformed into a mighty dragon; the gakuensei used the legend to describe our studies at Urasenke. So the single white tessen blossom, sparkling under a fine mist of water, hung from a chain in a boat-shaped bamboo flower holder called a suribune; its bow faced the “lower” end of the toko, an out-of-the-ordinary signifier of departure: here, our separation from homes, friends, family to study in Kyoto. On a sheaf of thick paper on the bottom of the toko sat a red incense box (indicating that sumidemae, the charcoal-laying procedure, would not be performed) in the shape of a koi, the lowly fish. Us. The scroll, written by Daisōshō, read ryūsui kandan nashi: “in running water there are no interruptions,” perhaps. Don’t look to me to explain this one to you. Perhaps its a Zen counterpoint to the fish-dragon legend. (That is, it’s obviously Zen; I’m making up the rest.) The waterfalls don’t actually exist. There is no spoon.
Then the sweets were brought out, and I thought ruefully of my inability, that day at Oimatsu, to consistently do something as basic as pressing sugar into a mold. The gakuensei had themselves prepared gorgeous kuzu manjū, colored bean paste suspended in a translucent hemisphere made somehow of arrowroot starch, I think; these were named ryūmon, “Dragon Gate,” for the three colors in each: pink, yellow, and green–one for each waterfall.
A young woman entered the room next to prepare usucha using the furo and mizusashi that rested on a long lacquered board called, in Japanese, “long board” (nagaita). (With these two dōgu sitting on the nagaita, I’ll add just because I can, the temae is called futatsuoki: “two things put.” Not everything about tea is as impenetrable as the scrolls.) Now, I sat far from the place of preparation, and couldn’t get a close look at any of the dōgu before we were shuffled to the next room, so much of the following is secondhand. The kama itself was a tall, nearly cylindrical one that tapered toward the top (I’m counting on somebody posting the proper name for this geometric shape in the comments) called–because of shape or finish or what, I don’t know–unryū, “Cloud Dragon.” A kettle optimistic that we’ll achieve transformation, it was! The mizusashi was blue Italian glass with what looked from a distance like wave patterns and, it was said, Daisōshō’s crest on the underside of the lid. The natsume was likewise said to bear a wave design. The chashaku was a rather precious (compared to my 500-yen bamboo special) one made of old wood from Kinkakuji; really wish I’d gotten a close look at that one.
While our teishu made two bowls of tea–first in a black raku bowl made by a (current? former?) student’s father (I think), next in a not-black not-raku (I didn’t get anywhere near these, remember) bowl whose name came to me as aokaede–green maple–the smilingest of all the students here (and a real cutie, I think I can add here without creating trouble for myself) played hantō and said stuff in Japanese while somewhere behind me, but unfortunately just out of earshot, Hamana-sensei provided a certain amount of English. I just enjoyed my tea (brought from the back, like all but the the first two bowls; mine came in a chawan with the glaze done, if I recall correctly, in the technique called mishima) while attempting to ignore the mounting agony in my knees.
On the way out of the room I had time enough only to take a quick peek into the black lacquer tabakakon (style: fumibako, because something about it supposedly looks like a letterbox) to see the green-glazed oribe hiire, made by the mother (I think) of the student whose father (I think) made the black raku bowl. But the last stage of the chakai awaited us: a tenshin meal prepared by the gakuensei and served in the room 5-room 6 complex, which had been redecorated in our absence with an ikebana-style flower arrangement (as opposed to chabana–flowers for tea–which have their own rules) with lotus blossoms floating in water alongside some unidentified flowers (meaning, their names were most likely given but I don’t remember them) in toko #5; and a scroll in toko #6 with a painting of a fish mid-flop, which certainly describes me on my way up–or possibly down–the waterfalls.
I won’t lie: by now my knees hurt far too much for me to fully enjoy the meal. Still, I recognized and admired the skill with which it had been executed. Trays were set down in front of us bearing sticky cakes of rice studded with green peas and pressed into the shapes of gourds; the rice was from some student’s rice-famous home prefecture and the peas were just in season. Also there were choice nuggets of tai fish; bites of bamboo shoot and other tasties I couldn’t identify; flower-shaped dishes full of more delicious mystery stuff. And boiled egg halves, each cooked for exactly nine minutes. Sake was served in the small red saucers that always make me wonder who exactly first thought putting liquid in a basically flat container was a good idea. Taking my etiquette cues from Hamana-sensei, I drank three servings. It was good stuff, from some sake-famous prefecture–possibly the same one the rice came from. And then the nimono came out in covered bowls: delicate sōmen noodles in the mildest fish stock, topped with another chunk of tai and exactly two julienned strips of carrot, and concealing a tiny seed-like granule of I-don’t-know-what that had the most remarkably strong, cleansing, and otherwise indescribable flavor. Though maybe Sen-Sen isn’t too far off.
I’m pretty sure that by this time I’d given up on seiza entirely and was just kneeling upright. As is customary, I pulled tissues out of my sleeve to wipe down all of the utensils I’d eaten off of, starting with the nimono bowl’s cover, to put the condensation on its underside to good use. Into the plastic bag in my other sleeve (the left one, where dirty things go) I put the tissues and the only inedible part of the meal, a decorative leaf. The business ends of our chopsticks, having until now rested over the left rim of the tray in a show of cleanliness, were now rested on the flat of the tray; traditionally, the sound of an in-unison chopstick drop alerts the host that the trays are ready to be collected. One last cup of tea (Bancha? Maybe.) and the event was over. I limped home exceedingly impressed with the gakuenseis’ efforts, and looking forward to writing the thank-you letter I now owed them.
Changed into samue and did pitiful battle with furo ash until just before the cafeteria closed. Ate. Had a couple of drinks. Wondered when Friday nights stopped being occasions. Slept.
