茶の湯

I’ve been reading up on Chanoyu, or Sado, or Tea Ceremony, or The Way of Tea, or whatever you like to call it. One of my coworkers took me to her ochakai lesson with her mother and for the first time EVER I got to wear kimono! It was so exciting, and probably also very good for my posture. The obi is very tight and stiff, but not completely restricting, but the most difficult thing, I found, was standing up and sitting down without letting the undergarment show. I felt a little awkward, but I’m sure if I could practice all the time, I could easily get used to it. However, putting on a kimono by oneself is no easy task. I have a kimono, but I unfortunately do not have all of the appropriate underthings…yet. Don’t you love the tabi (socks)? They remind me of Ninja Turtle feet. Hee.

 

Also, I’ve been to ochakai before, but this was a lesson, and not an actual tea-meet. It was way more relaxed than the real thing, which made me feel a lot more comfortable and about 75% less awkward and foreign! You can learn so much about Zen philosophy from tea ceremony, and Japanese culture as well. If you want to learn more about the way of tea, I’d recommend reading “The Book of Tea” by Kakuzo Okakura. It’s all about the aesthetics and philosophy that are the tea ceremony itself. The book also includes the history of tea ceremony and talks about its earliest forms. The book also has a few anecdotes about the most influential tea master, Sen-no Rikyu, who broke apart his tea bowl and committed ritual suicide after performing his final tea ceremony.

“[tea ceremony] is an attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life.”

– Tenshin Okakura, The Book of Tea

梅番茶

One of my coworkers is a tea expert!! Well, kind of! He certainly knows a whole lot about tea, and has a collection of different kinds inside the cupboard next to his desk. He makes his own personal stash of bancha (which is roasted green tea) and umeboshi (pickled pums, that I usually get my very own container of every now and again). Today was a pretty chilly inside our lovely concrete block of a school, even though the plum trees outside are blooming and making their best effort to make spring start happening. So, in an effort to warm up, he made me some ume-bancha, which goes a little something like this:

you will need:

• umeboshi
• bancha (or just roast some medium-grade green tea yourself!)
• plum blossoms (optional)
• honey (optional)

directions:

First, bring some water to boil for the tea. Once the water has boiled, turn off the heat and wait a minute!! Then, pour the boiling water into your tea pot with the dry leaves on the bottom, and steep for two minutes.

While the tea is steeping, remove the seed from inside the umeboshi, and place in a teacup. Pour your steeped tea through a fine strainer and over the pickled plum and float a plum blossom on top.

Plum blossoms should have a sweet fragrance, and are bitter to the taste. Make sure your flowers are safe enough to be consumed!! (i.e. no pesticides!)

If you like your tea sweetened, add some honey to this, and it will be really REALLY nice. The overall flavors are actually quite bitter and then sour at the end, but honey will add a really nice sweetness that compliments the umeboshi really well.

Enjoy!

お茶会

I went to an ocha-kai today in Kiryu! I’d never been to a tea ceremony before, so I was really happy to have the chance to go! There are so many small details in a tea ceremony, like the color, shape and design of the serving vessels, the type of sweets that you’re served, even the way the tokonoma is outfitted with a scroll and a piece of ikebana, that it’s almost overwhelming to a beginner. I’m serious! It’s hard to take in all of this stuff on the first time!!  It was a really cool experience though, and I would really like to go to one again, now that I know a little more about it.
On a separate note, I felt severely underdressed. I SHOULD have worn my yukata, but I am unfortunately not able to put it on (in a decent manner) by myself. Had I known this was a yukata-appropriate occasion, I would have worn it.

      

It would have matched really well with all the purple hydrangeas and irises, too. Bummer. One day I’ll get to wear it! One day!!!