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

Return to the original one again

keiko to wa ichi yori narai ju wo shiri ju yori keru moto no sono ichi

In training for chanoyu, you go from one to ten and return to the original one again.

This is from one of Rikyu’s 100 poems. Next week we will close the ro and begin the summer season for chanoyu. Before we begin the furo season, all the classes will review the basics again. We will learn how to walk in the tea room, how and when to bow. We will review folding the fukusa and purify the tea utensils and correct bad habits that we have acquired along the way.

When I went to Japan to study tea, even though I had 15 years of tea training, they began teaching us how to walk and bow. The sensei assumed you knew nothing and started everyone at the beginning, no matter how long you had studied. One sensei said that I had accumulated many bad habits and I needed to go back to the beginning. At first I was rather put out by what I thought was wasting time, until I found out that at every koshukai (intensive training workshop), they taught the basics to everyone, even teachers of more than 20 years’ experience. They call this warigeiko.

Even though we go back to the beginning, it really is not the beginning because we have some experience of what it is like to study. I like to think of it as a spiral. Each time you come back to the beginning, you go deeper and learn more about yourself, your temae and your relationships. Just like the seasons come around again, it is different every year. This spring is not like last spring, nor the spring before that.

So next week, bring your fukusa basami, chakin, chasen, chashaku. Be prepared for warigeiko, back to the orginial one again.

Sakura Festival Saturday

Please join us at Uwajimaya in Beaverton for the Sakura festival. Issoan tea school will be demonstrating tea ceremony on stage in the parking lot (early in the morning). Right after that, Aikido Yoshokai will take the stage for a demonstration of Aikido. See you there.

When: Saturday, April 25th 9:00 am tea ceremony, 10:00 am Aikido
Where: Sakura Festival, Uwajimaya
10500 SW Beaverton-Hillsdale Hwy. Beaverton, OR 97005
Phone: (503)643-4512

Hisashi Yamada

Hisashi Yamada, a loving and devoted tea ceremony teacher at Urasenke Chanoyu Center of
New York, passed away on April 18, 2009 at the age of 81. He will be greatly missed by
all his family, friends and students.

Please share this information with anyone who was acquainted with Mr. Yamada.

Funeral Service: Tuesday, April 21, 2009, 2:30PM

The service will take place at Riverside Memorial Chapel
180 West 76th Street *entrance on Amsterdam Avenue- NYC 10023
http://www.riversidememorialchapel.com, tel. 212 362 6600

Under the cherry trees

Thank you to Ikuko and her husband Mike for coming out to view the sakura and share their tasty lunch with us. And thank you Ronda for wearing your kimono. It was a lovely day, although we missed the blossoms by a few days, we served several adventurous souls tea and sweets.