At lunch we met two of the female Midorikai students who have been here since September. Tanja and Verena are both from Finland.

After lunch (chicken katsu), the new students gathered at the Urasenke center to fill out a round of paperwork. We met, in passing, one of our teachers, an American named Gary-sensei, with whom I may have gotten off on the wrong foot–or hand, anyhow: when I gave him my standard firm American handshake, he quietly but curtly warned me not to squeeze so hard. Bouncing off a plane from the Czech Republic and into the office was another new student, Nadezda, who goes by “Nadia” for simplicity’s sake.

Then we were led to the local ward office to register as resident aliens. The bureaucratic machine here looks and operates much like it does back home; it was like going to a DMV where I didn’t understand 95% of what was said to me.

After dinner (some sort of fish), Tanja and Verena led us to the women’s dorm and persuaded the vigilant attendant at the lobby desk that the men were there with only the most honorable intentions. Then we got to see their own second-floor tea practice room and cast-off stuff collection, and the room full of dōgu (tea implements) that we’ll be able to use for our own ceremonies later in the year.

On Szymon’s recommendation, after dark I returned to Nijo castle with Sean in tow. A huge crowd had lined up outside to pay a 400 yen admission fee: during sakura season, the castle illuminates its trees and some of its structures for a nighttime celebration they call “Nijo LightUp.” The path through the grounds is chosen with care to create a sense of pacing. Entering through the giant gates and turning left, we first found one little pink-blossomed tree glowing in the walls’ corner beneath a spectral guard tower. Then a restrained row of trees; then larger clusters, larger trees. The ones with bigger blossoms were crowd favorites, and everyone pressed close with camera phones held aloft to get pictures.

Down one path, tea ceremony was being demonstrated in the castle tea house, but Sean and I decided to skip it, following the majority of the visitors past a pond where a particularly lovely sakura hovered delicately over its reflection in the still water. The tour’s grand finale was a long straight lane between rows of giants, old trees that had grown to overhang the path almost completely with their branches: a dizzying barrel vault of floral lacework.

We exited through a makeshift market where food and souvenirs were peddled from brightly lit white fabric pavilions. Happy families huddled on benches in the cold with steaming bowls of udon noodles; Sean and I bought skewers of hot, chewy dango balls dipped in a sweet and savory sauce before hiking home up Horikawa-dōri through the finger-numbing night.

I showered and dressed, bought a hot can of coffee from the vending machine in the dorm lobby, and stepped outside to get a better look at my home for the next year. The morning was bright, clear, and crisp, though the sky threatened to haze up as the day wore on. A trickle of middle-aged women, likely tea instructors, walked elegantly up the sidewalks in small groups, wearing kimono in muted colors.

I ironed a pair of slacks and a dress shirt, got dressed, and felt fat. My waistline isn’t what it was when I bought these pants, and it wasn’t then what it was the first time I came to Japan. I suspect, though, that the lifestyle here will begin to shrink me in short order.

Szymon led Sean and I up the block to the Urasenke Center, where Nishimura-sensei brought us tea and Hamana-sensei introduced us to Arita-sensei, the manager of Urasenke’s international division. We passed the gate to Konnichian, the historic Sen (whence UraSENke) family residence, at which students are required to bow in respect, saw the actual school building and cafeteria, and completed a circuit of the block before retrieving Almerindo from the dorm and retracing our steps to get lunch. The cafeteria, or shokudo, is small and cozy, serving lunch and dinner to students and Urasenke employees; based on the soba I had today, I’ll always look forward to mealtime.

We returned to the dorm via one of Kyoto’s many hidden gems: a little shrine complex tucked away just across the street and around a corner. Sakura trees bloomed explosively between the wise old buildings of weathered wood.

A maintenance crew brought me a dresser, and another trip to the 2nd floor yielded a big wheeled clothes rack; I rearranged my room again and was happy with the results. Sean and I went for a walk around the neighborhood, stopping in a tea utensil shop and a small department store. Then we met Szymon for dinner. The shokudo was empty except for the three of us eating and the two ladies who served us miso soup and tempura and then chattered quietly in the kitchen.

After dinner Szymon disappeared and Sean and I went to the roof of the dorm to take pictures of the city at sunset. I realized then that I wasn’t quite past the jet lag after all. I wrote a little and edited video for a while, popped over to Sean’s room for a cup of tea, and turned in early.