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.

Rennovations complete at Issoan Tea Room

To my readers, I apologize for the lapse in blogging this last month.  I will do better going forward.

For those of you who have emailed me asking if I was going to continue blogging and if I am okay, thank you and yes, I am okay just very busy this summer.

I thought that I would post some photos of the newly rennovated Issoan Tea Room:

 

This is the entry way into the tea room

 

Awning detail

Door handle detail

Tea room interior

Fusuma door detail

Shoji Window and detail

Overhead shoji lamp

I would like to express my gratitude to my design and construction manager, my husband.  As you can see, he does beautiful work. It was his ideas to take the old book of tea utensils apart and apply them to the fusuma.  He also wanted to incorporate the piece of wood given to us in the door and door handle.  And the shoji lamp with its curved supports are all his own design and execution.   Thank you so much.

Thank you also to my students who were patiently waiting for the tea room to be done.  We can now have classes here again.

Issoan Tea room closed for renovations

I want to acknowledge and thank Janelle for her donation to Issoan Tea School.   A box arrived the other day that contained 3 kimono (summer, hitoe and awase), 4 obi (3 summer and one fukuro), 3 juban, 2 hada juban sets, 4 obi jime and obi age sets, plus himo, obi ita, obi makura and 8 pair of tabi.   It is a complete kimono wardrobe for tea for the entire year.   Thank you so much Janelle.  It will be put to good use by the students and we will think of you everytime we see them worn.


In other news, Issoan Tea Room is closed for the month of October for renovations.   When they are complete, I'll post some photos.  

Chado in the real world

I love to enter the tea room, view the scroll and flowers and smell the incense.   The tea room is a safe place where the rules of etiquette ensure that everyone knows what is coming and how to conduct themselves. We are among people who share the ideals of wa, kei, sei and jaku.  This is the world of tea. 

And yet, there is this duality.   My life in tea, or my life when not doing tea.  Which is the real world?  Sometimes it feels like the tea room is more real than the rest of my life where I worry about finances, conflicts at work, my family, shopping and many other things.In the tea room, I am only concerned with making good tea, concern for my guests and doing my best. 

For many years, I had to drive across town after work to attend tea class.   Right in the middle of the most awful traffic is when I'd be on the freeway driving to sensei's house. Sometimes it took me more than two hours to get there and I dreaded making the trip.  By the time I got to class I was late, frustrated and distracted.  One night I noticed on my way home that every time I went to tea class, I was very happy driving home.  Most of the time, traffic was very light, but sometimes it was just as bad as when I went to class. It didn't matter, I was very happy driving home.  

Sensei says "Wa, kei, sei, jaku are easy in the tea room."  That is what she was training me in.  The hard part was taking wa, kei, sei, jaku with you when you left.  When we begin to take the way of tea seriously, something changes in our lives. We want to share the experience we have in the tea room with others.  I noticed in my own life how I began to clean up after myself, even though I had been rather a slob growing up.  I started to empty my house of things, talked softer and lost my temper less.   My husband said that tea had ceased to be a hobby with me and became a lifestyle.

The Urasenke Creed begins:

We are sincerely learning the essence of Chado and practice to put it into our daily lives. We continually reflect upon ourselves to attain this end.  In accepting a bowl of tea, we shall be grateful for the kindness of others and always mindful of mutual consideration.  We shall communicate the virtues of Chado through our own example:

1. We shall consider others first.
2. We are a family and Iemoto is our parent.  All who enter his gate to learn Chado are brothers.  As we are one in spirit, we shall respect all we meet.
3. As we advance along the Way of Tea, we shall always keep the spirit of the the beginner.
4. With a sincere and generous heart, we shall work together to cultivate ourselves to illuminate the world in which we live.

Back to the beginning

I have already written posts about going back to basics and back to one again, but for this week's lessons we are changing to the ro season and we are reviewing the very first things we learned in the tea room again. Every change of season we go back to the beginning in how to bow, how to enter the tea room, how to walk, turn, sit and stand and move about the tea room. We also review warigeiko: folding fukusa, purifying utensils, handling hishaku and most importantly the roles of the guest and host. This is a good time to correct bad habits that we have accumulated over the past season and straighten up sloppy handling of utensils.

Funny thing is that my students have taught me more about basics than I think I am teaching them. I have found quite often in teaching the way of tea that the lessons I am teaching are really not what the students are learning. Yes, this week's classes are about the technical aspects of learning tea, but what one of my students told me after class was that we should go back to basics in other parts of our life as well. We talked about being grateful and how it is very rare these days to receive a hand written thank you note, especially that people don't write in cursive handwriting anymore.

One of the things that another student talked about was that tea forces her to slow down. At first she was rather resentful in having to go back and re-do something she thought she already mastered. This led to a discussion of what mastery really means. Does folding your fukusa every week during your temae mean you have mastered it?

Even high ranking teachers with many years of experience, when they go to an intensive seminar, they start with the beginning of tea training: how to bow, how to walk, how to fold the fukusa and every time I have attended a tea training seminar, I realize just how sloppy I have become and how many bad habits that I have accumulated.

Also for me, going back to the beginning is really not back to the beginning but going back and learning the basics at a deeper level. It also connects me back to when I began as a tea student and was so very excited about learning the way of tea. I have at times become quite nonchalant about my tea studies, and it helps to recapture "the humble, but eager heart of the beginner" again.

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.

What Remains: Japanese Americans in Internment Camps

My friend Margaret Chula, poet, has a new book out. What Remains: Japanese Americans in Internment Camps, Poems by Margaret Chula, Art Quilts by Cathy Erickson.

This collaboration of artists is very moving. Each art quilt has an accompanying poem written in a different voice from the camps. A young boy who had a pet rabbit, a young woman longing to dance the jitterbug, a husband/father fashioning furniture from scraps of wood.

"This is truly a beautiful, remarkable achievement -- two artists bringing history to life through visionary quilts and insightful writings." ~ Lawson Fusao Inada, Poet Laureate of Oregon

"Cathy Erickson's quilts, combined with Magaret Chula's luminous poems, evoke emotions of rage, regret, confusion, sadness, resignation and ultimately, hope." ~ Colleen Wise, Casting Shadows: Creating Visual Depth in Your Quilts.

"The dynamic interplay of Magaret Chula's poetry and Cathy Erickson's quilts is collaborative art at its best. Chula's poems weave a memorable story and voice into each visually stunning quilt -- together a powerfully beautiful interpretation of the Japanese American interment camp Experience." ~ Amy Uyematsu, 30 Miles from J-Town.

This is a subject that is close to my heart. One of my mother's best friends was interned at Minidoka, and college friend's parents met at Manzanar, and another a high school friend's father caught scarlet fever at Tule Lake.

In 1990, Portland, Oregon dedicated a park on the waterfront to the people who were rounded up and sent to the camps. It was part of an event that brought back -- some for the first time since being interned -- people who had lived and worked together in Portland. And I was on the publicity committee at that time.

I took some oral histories from returnees. What had happened to them after they had to leave their homes and businesses, during their internment and after their release. As part of my duties, I tried to place articles about the reunion and the internment in national magazines and newspapers. I remember one young assistant editor I contacted in New York. She told me that they did not publish fiction. I told her that it was the truth, and she said that the United States would never do that to U.S. citizens and I must be mistaken they must have been Japanese nationals and spies. She further told me that she had asked other people in her office in New York about the internment and nobody else had heard about it either.

You can see the park along the waterfront in Northwest Portland. The cherry trees bloom there every spring, and you can stroll along the path of stones carved with haiku about having your freedom taken away.

You can order your own copy of this wonderful book from:


Full Color, 108 pages, 8.5 x11, $24.95 + $3 S/H

Edited to add that the Address and ISBN for this book is wrong. Please order your book from:

Katsura Press
P.O. Box 10584
Portland OR 97296
ISBN: 978-0-9638551-1-4

Japanese words as prizes

I have finally decided what I will be offering for prizes for the contest in honor of the 250th blog post at SweetPersimmon. Thank you all to the regular readers, all of my sensei and sempai, students of Chado and those who have only a passing interest. You have made this blog experience rewarding.


Prize number 1 will be a CD of Japanese for the tea room. It features an explanation in English the basics of Japanese pronunciation and very basic Japanese grammar. It also has the dialog for usucha, usucha haiken, koicha, and koicha haiken. The dialog includes the English translation and then the Japanese slowly twice, then again at normal speed. The final part is the dialog for aisatsu before and after study.

Prize number 2 will be a copy of Michael Soei Birch's120 page manuscript, "An Anthology of the Seasonal Feeling in Chanoyu. This is a workbook, compiled by Michael Birch and written in English and romanji. It is filled with all kinds of information and it is a good source for seasonal gomei, or poetic names. The manuscript is divided into the four seasons -- Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter with information about each. It is further divided into each month that includes information about the month, perhaps haiku, appropriate scrolls, seasonal words and suggested gomei. It is illustrated throughout with Michael's calligraphy so you can see the kanji for each word, scroll, phrase or haiku.
Here are a few sample pages:The contest eligibility and the rules
Okay, to be eligible for the prizes (there will be two winners, one prize each) there are a few things you have to do. First, if you have a blog, please link it to this blog. I will also link to your blog in return. Second, you need to post a comment to this post. Not just any comment, but you need to answer two questions.

First question: How did you learn about chado and why are you studying? If you are not studying, what do you find interesting about the SweetPersimmmon blog?

Second question: How much of the traditional Japanese teaching methods do you think need to be incorporated in learning Chado outside of Japan? For those not studying, what do you think the best way would be to learn something like the Japanese tea ceremony?

I do ship internationally so everyone can participate. Please leave me a way to contact you to inform you if you have won.

The contest remains open until midnight PDT August 31st 2009. That's 10 days folks, to get your answers together and compose your answers. Winners will be chosen randomly. All decisions final. Prizes will ship by September 2. Good luck!

What do you love?

It is not often that we give ourselves permission to love, or let alone talk about the things we love. These days it is hip and cool to be cynical and make fun of others who are too emotional. Someone told me once that I needed to take a look at where I was spending my money, because there also was my heart.

These days, I spend my heart on chado, my husband, my grandchildren, my students, and sewing. Besides the essentials of food and shelter, there also I spend my money. Since leaving the corporate world, I have pared down my lifestyle to fit my considerably reduced income and I could not be happier.

Just as wabi used to mean to be disappointed by failing in some enterprise or living a miserable and poverty stricken life, some of my former associates would look at my present life and think that I am miserable. But wabi also means to transform material insufficiency so that one discovers in it a world of spiritual freedom.

Right now, I have never been more joyful in my life. Everyday is a good day. I feel aligned in living my values and in the integrity of what I do. I feel grateful for the opportunity to live this life. I love what I do, I love my life and I love to share with others some of the things I've learned through chado.

What do you love?

The Honest Scrap Award

Jordan at Succession of Insights blog has tagged me with The Honest Scrap award. I didn’t know that someone thought so highly of this blog to give me an award. It is rather humbling and makes me want to do much better at it.

These are the rules for acceptance :

1. List 10 honest things about yourself, hopefully interesting.
2. Pass the award on to 7 bloggers.

So here is my list of 10 honest things about myself, you may find interesting.

1. I am not Japanese, though I find the culture fascinating. I lived in Japan for a year and teach traditional Japanese tea ceremony.
2. I find national politics entertaining and follow it quite closely
3. We decided to stop taking the local newspaper when it was consolidated from 4 sections into two.Though I do miss having the newspaper to wrap things up or put down before a messy job like repotting plants or painting.
4. I kill plants. I used to take my sick plants to my mom to rescue. She would trade me with her blooming healthy plants and make my plants well again. Since she passed away, I cannot keep plants alive.
5. Though I worked in the technology field for more than 30 years, I am a technology laggard. I have not ever texted, nor am I on twitter. I have a mobile phone, but often leave it at home and rarely check it, so don’t leave a message, call the home phone.
6. I don’t miss my high paying corporate job, but sometimes it would be nice just to buy something without having to check the balance in my checking account to see if I can afford it.
7. I love my students. I love every single one of them. They are all different, they all have talents, they are all so dedicated. Thank you for choosing me.
8. I have a drawer full of blank journals. Nothing written in them yet, but I keep collecting them.
9. I have a closet full of art supplies that I have accumulated over many unfinished projects. I am great at starting, but lousy at finishing. Oh yes, I also have knitting stuff, crochet stuff, hand spinning stuff, paper stuff and other miscellaneous craft stuff that I have never finished.
10. I know how to cook, I just don’t like it that much. I started cooking for my family when I was nine years old and continued until I graduated from high school. My husband is a great cook. He finds it a creative outlook, and I am trying to see it that way, too.

And now for 7 bloggers, check ‘em out:

1. Fashion Incubator
   
2. First Draft
3. Nuido
4. You Sew Girl
5. Talk Left
6. Firedoglake
7. Emptywheel

One-of-a-kind Handbags and Purses

Now a word from our sponsors. SweetPesimmon.com is the retail site that supports this blog, so please check it out and buy something to support this blog. You may or may not know that I have been making one-of-a-kind handbags and purses and now they are for sale on my retail website. Handbag link. I also have meditation seats for those of you who have trouble with dead feet while sitting seiza, as well as tea, teaware, incense, photos, books. Also I have started a sewing blog. (link to the left). Thank you we will now return to our regularly scheduled blog.

Putting it into practice

Every week we go to okeiko to practice the procedures for making tea. Inside the tea room there are rules and etiquette to guide us in the proper behavior for both the guest and the host. It often seems archaic and stiff – too formal for today’s modern life. But what we are learning can be of help to us outside the tea room if we put it into practice in our everyday life.

One of the things we learn is kansha, when we lift the bowl of tea or tray of sweets in silent gratitude. During the day we can take a few seconds and acknowledge what we have in silent gratitude. Nobody has to know what you are doing.

When we say “Otemae chodai itashimasu” we are not just thanking the host for the tea. We are thanking him for the preparation beforehand and making of the tea as well as the person who ground the tea, grew the tea and packaged the tea. In fact, we are thanking everyone that made it possible for the tea we are about to drink.

In doing our work in the mizuya, everyone cleans their own utensils. And further, everyone helps to clean the mizuya and put things away in their proper place. In other words clean up your own mess and then help clean up the group mess.

People get a chance to practice leadership skills when they become the mizuya cho. As the head of the mizuya, you must know what needs to be done and be able to direct people to get it done and take all the responsibility if something is not done or not done right. As a mizuya worker, it is good to practice doing what needs to be done without the mizuya cho directing you. Just get it done with the least fuss. This is learning to work together. The sooner the chores are done the sooner the whole group gets to go home.

The very first words of the Kotoba or Creed are “We are striving to learn the essence of Chado and to put it into practice in our daily lives.”

Inspiration from the Grand Tea Master’s visit

I just returned from Seattle where Dr. Genshitsu Sen, the retired Grand Tea Master of Urasenke School of tea visited last week. During the thee day visit, there were many chakai (tea gatherings), lectures, and receptions and meals shared with this remarkable man. He has made it his vision and life mission to spread peace through a bowl of tea.

Though many people have not heard of him, Dr. Sen has traveled the world and hosted many of the world leaders to tea. He is charismatic and inspirational. Just being part of the events in Seattle have instilled a new fire within me to be a better chajin and share the way of tea with people.

Even though I was dressed for 3 days in my very best formal kimono, I was part of the work crew behind the scenes to make it all run smoothly. We served more than 300 bowls of tea each day. From setting up equipment in the morning, to whisking tea, to washing tea bowls and cleaning up in the evening only to begin again the next morning, I felt part of something much larger. And I learned so much about how to work a large event such as this.

I was also able to assist with teaching a session of the University of Washington chado class with Tim Olsen sensei and Genko san. They have moved all classes to Shoseian, the tea house in the Japanese Garden. How lucky they are to study in a real tea house surrounded by a beautiful Japanese garden.

And Monday we begin our new introduction to Japanese Tea Ceremony class at Issoan.

Aren’t we the lucky ones, whose hearts were stolen away by tea?

Chisoku – Contentment

I wanted to write something about this as the last post was about desire and achieving goals. So often I compare myself to other people and find myself coming up short. So and so has more money and if I had what he has, I’d be happy. Or I wish I had her job, or I wish I had more time to --------.

There was a story about two neighbors. One had a beautiful yard, green lawn, trimmed bushes, and flowering fruit trees. The other’s yard was overgrown with dandelions, leaves unraked from last year and wild branches everywhere. The unkempt neighbor said to his friend, “I want a yard just like my neighbor’s.” His friend responded, “Jim, if you had a yard like your neighbor’s, in six months time, your yard will look exactly the same as the yard you have now.”

I have found two ways to deal with this coming up short feeling. Get to work to change yourself or want what you already have. The last post was about working to get what you want, but I’d like write some more about wanting what you already have. You can also read here about how much is enough.

In our society it is not easy to be satisfied with what we have. 6-7,000 advertising messages a day exhort us to want more, be more, buy more. The consumer economy only works as long as everyone keeps on buying more and more. We are richest country on earth, so much so that overeating is a major problem. We have the largest houses in the world, and yet 1 in every 10 rents additional storage space for their stuff.

When we moved from Seattle to Portland we bought a smaller home and people asked us why when we could afford a larger one. Because we have no need of a larger home. My sister just bought an 800 sq. ft. home for herself, her husband and daughter. They will be moving from a 2400 sq.ft home to one a third the size.

With the economy tanking, smaller more fuel efficient cars are rising in popularity as well as an environmental consciousness to leave a smaller carbon footprint to stop global warming. Publications such as Real Simple and the Tightwad Gazette feed into these trends.

Rikyu said, “There is shelter enough if it keeps the rain off, and food enough when it staves off hunger. We draw water, gather firewood, boil the water and make tea.” (from the Nampuroku) and “Tea should not be an exhibition of what the tea man owns. Instead the sincerity of his heart should be expressed.” (from Rikyu’s 100 poems)

The Japanese kanji for contentment is made up of two characters: chi soku, literally to know sufficiency. Nobody can tell us how much is enough. If we rely on external sources to tell us, there will never be enough. There will always be something more that we do not have. Only we know what it is in our lives to know sufficiency. It comes from inside us. It comes from appreciating what we already have, from knowing what is really important to us, and deciding what we can live without.

On receiving teaching

In my study of Chado, I have had some very strict sensei. They would watch me make tea and pick apart everything from how I wore my kimono to the speed or slowness of my movements. They insisted that I sit properly in seiza even when my legs and feet were screaming at me for movement. I almost quit tea lessons a hundred times. Yet I came back for more. There was definitely something that drew me back again each time I got discouraged.

I have a friend who is a Zen priest. When she began to study chado, she learned everything very quickly. She told me, if you truly want to learn the Way, you have to steal the knowledge, sensei don’t just give it to you for free. Another sempai told me that the way of tea is filled with jewels, but you have to dig them out yourself.

It wasn’t until I went to Japan to study that I finally appreciated how strict my sensei were. I complained regularly to my sempai about how tough the teachers were on me. Often they were stricter with me than any other student, and I would get flustered and angry. Why were they being so unfair with me? Finally, after listening to me for months, he said, “Don’t you get it? It takes a lot more effort for teahcers to be strict with their students. The strictness you see as picking on you is really them showing you how much they care about you. They want you to do well and will spend the time to correct you. So next time you get a correction, just say ‘hai’, or even better say ‘thank you’”.

Receiving a bowl of tea

The etiquette of receiving a bowl of tea at a tea ceremony may seem somewhat tedious as there is a lot of handling and moving the bowl around. The proper way to receive a bowl of tea is for the guest to slide across the tatami mat and get his own bowl of tea after the host puts it out; making sure the front of the teabowl is facing himself. It takes a certain amount of grace to slide backward then move the bowl with you back to your place in kimono without it opening up and become a mess. But once back in your place, the bowl is brought just inside the line and placed between you and the next guest. “Osaki ni” (excuse me for going before you) is said with a semiformal bow of both guests together. The bowl is then placed inside the line in front of your knees and a formal bow thanking the host with “Otemae chodai itashimasu.” The bowl is then placed on the left palm for kansha (silent thanks) and the bowl turned twice clockwise to the back to drink from.

When the guest has had the last sip, and it is okay to slurp the last of the tea, he wipes where he has drunk with fingers that are then wiped on kaishi papers. The bowl is turned counterclockwise to the front and put down on the tatami mat outside the line for haiken or appreciation. After looking at the bowl, the guest returns it to the host exactly where the host put it out. Before returning it to the final place, the guest turns the bowl so that it is facing the host. He then returns to his place.

This whole ritual of receiving the bowl of tea is good because we are not often taught how to receive anything. Using this etiquette we can express our respect, thanks and appreciation of not only the tea, but the bowl, the host, and the other guests.

Gratitude for my sempai

In Japanese, sempai is the word for senior students. Kohai is the word for junior students. For many people who have not grown up with the sempai-kohai system it can be difficult to understand and for the system to work, it must have the cooperation of both the kohai and the sempai.

The sempai as a senior student has many responsibilities: to act as an example of the teaching of the sensei, to be the source for etiquette questions, to teach the kohai the behavior and procedures in the preparation room, and any other teaching out of sight of the sensei. If the kohai misbehave or make mistakes, it is the sempai who takes responsibility and is the one that gets in trouble.

The responsibilities of the kohai are to respect the sempai, to be humble and defer to the sempai, to ask the questions before attempting anything he hasn’t done before and accept the teachings.

A hard concept for me was to accept someone younger than I as my sempai. As we enter the way of tea, everyone who has been before you is your sempai, no matter how young and how inexperienced. I had 15 years of experience studying with my sensei when I went to study in Kyoto. Though I did have sempai that were wise and more experienced, some of my sempai were 18 or 19, had studied for less than a year and they had been in the program for six months before I came. They were still my sempai and though I might have known how to conduct myself at home, they still had more experience in the protocol and how to conduct themselves in Japan than I did and had a lot to teach me.

The lesson I learned from this is that everyone has something to teach me, even those younger and less experienced. To all of my sempai in the way of tea, thank you. Thank you very much for showing me the way.