Feb 25, 2014

Today's sweet

Yuki no ume

Feb 24, 2014

In memory of











Meanwhile behind the scenes.....


Take home gift

Feb 12, 2014

For Minako sensei

Minako sensei passed away 10 years ago today.  It was devastating at the time, and I felt unconnected and motherless.  I can hardly believe that 10 years have passed and yet it seems like she has been gone forever.  I am a teacher now, and that is what Minako sensei wanted for me.  But, oh, do I miss her every time I step into the tea room.  I am grateful to her for teaching me and encouraging me and instilling in me a love for the way of tea.  I cannot imagaine a life without it. In gratitude we will celebrate Minako sensei with a chakai this weekend.  I have been planning it for months, planning for 10 years....

Tea Ceremony for One

In preparation for one meeting in a lifetime,
I swept and dusted the tea room,
unrolled the scroll to hang.
I set the kettle to boil,
scooped tea powder into the container,
rinsed the tea bowl clean.
I filled the cold water jar,
carefully wiped the tea scoop
and arranged a single flower.

When the kettle
began to sing its lament,
I made you a bowl of tea
though you were not there to drink it.
I heard your step
whispering across the tatami,
glimpsed a shadow of your kimono
in the swirls of steam.

I inhaled the fragrance of plum
on a cold winter day
and sat listening to the wind in the pines.

The tea tasted so bitter that day.



Feb 9, 2014

Elevate your temae

I have a few students who can no longer sit seiza on tatami.  Some of them are sad because there are only a few table style temae you can do.  And there is no difference in the seasons for table style.  So I had a plan for them.

In Portland, we have been rather snowed in for the last three days.  That means that Mr. Sweetpersimmon has been in the shop and I have been at the sewing machine.  Look what we completed this week.  I asked my husband to build me a tatami table so that my students who cannot kneel can sit and make tea on stools.  From photos and diagrams he designed and built not only a tatami table, but a table that can fit a sunken ro.  He also designed the two tables to be portable.  They fold up into two boxes.  Not only that, he made the right hand table so that it can be changed out for the furo season. This means that we can do any temae on this table.  Which is good, because he will soon close the tea room for phase 2 of the renovations, and we can still have class on the tatami table.

Portable elevated tatami with sunken ro


Feb 7, 2014

Beginner's heart

One line of the kotoba reads: As we diligently learn the Way, we shall not forget the humble but eager heart of the beginner.  To many of us who have been studying the Way of tea for a number of years, it is easy to forget what it is like to be a beginner. It is easy to get jaded and consider that today, I will be doing just old hirademae.  I have done this dozens (or hundreds) of times and just go through the motions.  We forget what it is like to be a beginner.

I have a new class of beginners and they are eager and excited to come to class.  Nearly everything is new to them and somewhat intimidating. But their concentration is fierce.  They are paying attention to which foot is entering and leaving the tea room.  They are counting the number of weaves to sit in the proper place.  They listen hard when I am explaining something for the first time. They want to know the proper way to turn the bowl or which way their fan should be pointing. They are hungry for learning just about anything and everything. No matter how often I teach the beginner class, it is humbling to me that there is such enthusiasm for the Way of tea. 

When you are a beginning student, no job is beneath you.  Everything is important and you want to it properly.  Preparing your bowl to make tea is an important job.  Washing up and emptying the natsume is also an important job. For us experienced students, it is good to remember how eager we were to be included in planning a chakai, and even humble things like washing bowls, wiping tatami, and emptying the trash were important jobs.

This is why I like the gyakugatte temae.  It makes me feel like a beginner again. I have to concentrate on my footwork.  The utensils must be placed in different places and I have to remember the order and which hand goes where.  My heart beats fast, I make many mistakes, and it humbles me.  And yet, it brings back my eagerness for the Way of tea; to get it right and make the best tea I can for my guest.

Feb 2, 2014

Furo, Ro ash preparation

I'd like to introduce a guest blogger, Randy from Salt Lake City. Randy came to visit me just before New Year's and we had a fine chakai and shared tea and many stories from our time at Midorikai.  He was inspired to prepare ash for his furo.


I was looking at the blog on the Issoan tea site and it jogged my memory about a part of tea that is rarely thought of, or worked with...shimeshibai. The art of washing and preparing the ash -Shimeshibai- is done yearly at Konnichi-an. I started to look for more information online and found one entry that was made by an astute practitioner of tea named Drew Hanson in Philadelphia. Some of my memories were fragmented, so with the help of Soya Sensei of Portland Issoan tea school, and Drew's article, I was able to fill in the missing pieces. Since I was in need of a good ash cleaning I decided to do it 'off season' in March. But here is what I remember of what happened at Konnichi-an.

     During the hottest part of the summer, the Gyotei and other high ranking students would gather all of the ash (furo and ro combined) and dump it all in large buckets and huge barrels. They would add water and start stirring. Meanwhile, some students would beg Midori-kai members and gakuen-sei members to come and help. But they always caught us in our kimono, or as we were off to teach English. Soon they would be skimming off all of the debris that had floated to the top. I knew that they spiced the clean ash somehow and spread the muddy mixture out onto large reed mats to dry in the hot sun. All of this took place behind the high walls of the inner confines of Urasenke. After the ash was processed it was used for the Ro first by being stored in air tight containers kept in a shady area. Other ash seemed to be sectioned out to be used for the furo. Some of the Gakuen sei were roped into helping and had told me some of the things that they had done to prepare the ash but my Japanese was horrid so some of the information was lost in translation.

     One day, I was helping in the mizuya preparing for class and I wasn't too happy about it since one of the upper class men was mizuya cho and he was hard to deal with. Fresh ash must have been laid in the hearths because one of the rooms was due for Sumi temae. Shitabi had been set in the hearth and the heat let loose the spices that the ash had steeped in. The room filled with the most delightful scent. It was as if ko was not needed. It altered my mood and I immediately found one of the gakuen sei who I remember had helped wash the ash. I thanked him very much and informed him how wonderful the smell was. He had 'suffered honorably' and I think that he appreciated the recognition. Later I found one of the advanced students and thanked him also for his efforts.

 For my own part, I have found it a bit messy but kind of fun to wash the ash. I followed the instructions that I garnered and did it in a large plastic bucket.

1. I emptied all of my ash into the bucket. Then added water and stirred, stirred, stirred. As foam and other stuff floated to the top I would skim it off and throw it away but Drew says that it might be good for plants...it is worth a try.

2. I let the ash sit for a day or two. Then I poured off the clear water and added more. More Stirring, skimming, and waiting.

3. After I poured off the second batch of clear water, I scooped it all out onto cookies sheets lined with tinfoil. I waited for it to dry; seeing as how this was all done in an off month (January/February- not July), and I live in an apartment, I decided to bake my mud filled cookies sheets at 150 degrees until it was dry enough to sift through my metal colander. After it was all sifted I put it into air tight containers to use when necessary

4. Since I only have furos (those who have Ro's are very lucky), I treat my ash differently. I sift the heck out of it with as fine of a metal colander as I could get. I have a big rubbermaid box for all of my ash stuff, tools, etc.. Once the ash is sifted, clean and fresh I put it into large plastic containers that can be sealed air tight. If you have a Ro then the ash will be sifted and rubbed with rubber gloved hands to the consistency of corn meal-then stored.

    This is done yearly at Konnichi-an. It is a labour of love and a test of the resolve of the students and Gyo tei that teach and study at this amazing place. Their stores of spiced ash are vast and bountiful, my ash store is small, but I am thinking of going to local public fire pits and friend's BBQers for ash. It will have to go through the same process but ash is ash no matter where it comes from. It is valuable and stunning when haigata is carved into it. I guess that it is like getting the 'canvas' ready for a work of art carved by spoons, and brushes into mountains, valleys, and peaks inside the most beautiful fire pit ever seen.