A Tea Day

This is Minako, a very nice tea ceremony instructress I met yesterday. She has been teaching tea ceremony to one of my co-workers so I attended the final exam ceremony at my co-worker's home in Nara City.

The guests included myself, a monk, and my co-worker's husband. The character on the wall scroll is 夢, yume, or "dream". I was told this reflected part of the message my co-worker wished to convey with the ceremony.

First she served a few small, beautiful sweets. These prepared our palettes for the thick green tea served in special, beautiful bowls. Each bowl bore a decoration chosen by my co-worker for the particular guest. My bowl had a beautiful image of trees and Mount Fuji.

After this, we retired to another room for a more casual tea party. The monk had brought his amazing collection of antique tea bowls, and we watched as Minako opened each container to reveal one antique bowl after another. They were all very beautiful and very old, one of them being about a hundred and fifty years old.

Later, the monk brought out a collection of wood chips and a special device for burning slivers of them which he whittled off with a little razor. This was for kodo (香道), the Japanese art of incense burning. We passed around the device, the monk changing the contents after each round. Each aroma was pleasant, some being sweet, like powdered sugar, some being more like licorice. One smelled slightly like jalapeno, or so I thought.

The monk had also brought some very strong green tea which he served to us in only a drop at a time in tiny cups. It was sort of like drinking a drop of habanero sauce, in terms of strength, but hit the sinuses more like wasabi. It was good.

It was a nice day.