Oct 27, 2009

Blogging about Chado

Hello blog readers,

When I started this blog two and a half years ago, I had one or two students and I began to write about Chado for them. I had no idea that other people would be interested in or follow this blog. I know that there are some who have followed what I write here for a very long time, and thank you so much for reading. And to new readers, thank you for visiting.

Although I have a long list of blog topics to write about, I have from time to time taken inspiration from current events, tea class discussions, or happenings in my own life, I'd like to throw it open to the community... what would you like to read about? Please let me know, by posting in the comments, what you may be interested in. I may not know anything about it, but together perhaps we can explore the possibilities and continue the conversation.

Here is a partial list of topics either by student request or I have in my notes to write about:

Sweets recipes
More samurai stories
List of the 100 poems of Rikyu (in English)
Advanced temae
Flowers and flower arranging
History of tea masters
The roji (tea garden)
Rikyu and Hideyoshi stories
More stories of my time in Kyoto

What would you like to read more about? Vote on these in the comments or propose your own topics. And a sincere thank you to all readers, even if I don't know about you.

8 comments:

  1. I have some topics I would like to read about:
    * Gomei
    * Konomi
    * Jiku and their meaning
    * Temae, spesial things to keep in mind. Talking about the various seasonal temae, what they mean, what is special with them?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Marius,
    Thank you for your interest in the blog. I will add these to my list of topics. How is your tea study going? I hope you have had more opportunities to share the way of tea with others.
    Take care,
    Margie

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for inviting us to vote. I'm new to your blog and I would love to read about your thoughts on chabana and how you use flowers in the tea room. Kind regards, Nordic Lotus

    ReplyDelete
  4. nordic lotus,
    Thank you for your comment. I will certainly add your topics to my future blog posts. Thank you for reading the blog. I hope you enjoy reading.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I'd be very interested in reading about invitations to chaji and chakai.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous,
    Thank you for your comment. I am puzzled by this. Do you mean that you would like to be invited to our chaji and chakai? Where are you located?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Oh, no, sorry. I meant I'd like to read about how you deal with writing invitations in the context of chaji and chakai outside Japan. In Japan, too, for that matter, but I'm particularly interested in how you deal with non-Japanese-speaking guests, and with the "program" that accompanies a chakai, which lists things like information about certain utensils.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Oh, sorry for my misunderstanding.

    I can do a post on invitations. I think I still have copies of invitations to chaji that I attended in Japan. I will also give examples of invitations, timing and other things that need to be included in an invitation and some of the etiquette around receiving and responding to an invitation.

    At one time I did a post on
    kaiki
    , the tea record. It is thoughtful of the host to send a record home with the guests of the tea utensils used. Sometimes it is much later while studying the kaiki that one can get the subtlties of the theme and how the host has put together the combination of utensils. I also have a handy dandy form to help with putting together a kaiki and some examples.

    It might also be helpful to do a post on toriawase, that is, putting together utensils. Or perhaps using literature to illustrate a theme and how it can be used to structure your toriawase and give clues to your guests about the theme as each utensil and its story is revealed.

    ReplyDelete