The rest of the day was a hazy succession of naps punctuated by feeble attempts at writing email and editing video. At least the weather reverted suddenly to cool and dry, so I was able to enjoy a fresh, pleasant breeze blowing through my room. After school, Sean let me have some rice and miso and pickles to make soup with. Anita stopped by with bananas, water, and a vitamin drink. Almerindo brought me a big plate of delicious watermelon, which I ate in the bath. I was touched by the attention, and by mid-evening was feeling more like myself again.

I concluded the evening by consuming a medicine that Szymon and Sean prepared from the following: fresh-squeezed lemon juice, honey, and Polish vodka. Served hot. Quite efficacious, in its way.

MY SISTER IS ENGAGED TO BE MARRIED! CONGRATULATIONS, HEATHER!

I haven’t met the fellow, but I’ve heard only good opinions from reliable sources. The wedding is tentatively scheduled for late July; to my great dismay, I simply can’t afford to get to Alaska to witness it. I wish the couple great joy and contentment, and a blessed life together until DEATH DO THEY PART DO YOU READ ME LOUD AND CLEAR YOU TWO I WILL NOT REPEAT NOT STAND FOR A SHORTER DURATION.

Me? You won’t believe it: I studied tea today. Gary-sensei lectured on…well, more or less everything. Flowers and dōgu and poetic names for the month of June. What to do if your chaji gets rained on. The possibly apocryphal tea person who showed up to Hideyoshi’s giant tea gathering without a tea room. Or tea. He popped open an umbrella, hung his kettle from a tree, and mixed parched flour with water to drink. Hideyoshi, as the legend goes, stopped for tea nowhere else during the event.

Imagawa-sensei and kinindate koicha in the afternoon. My head was oddly foggy and I was having a bad kimono day, and nothing worked right. Felt like I’d never done kinindate or koicha. Couldn’t walk or turn correctly. Couldn’t wait to get out of there.

Got out of there. Enlisted Sean and Szymon’s help to celebrate Heather’s engagement with liberal doses of Suntory whisky and shrimp crackers slathered with okonomi sauce and mayonnaise, and sprinkled with furikake.

Pleased as punch, I was. And am. Once more: congratulations, Heather. It’s about damn time.

Gary-sensei gave an unenthusiastic and more-than-ordinarily unfocused lecture on kaiseki, charcoal, and the way to wash ash. (Of course we wash our ash. Our charcoal, too. Did you expect any less?)

In the afternoon we practiced making koicha using a tana. (The marujoku version, in my case.) Iit differs from making tea on the tatami almost exactly as tana usucha differs from hakobi usucha, so having gotten my head around tana complications and koicha complications separately, I was able to combine them without too much difficulty. And Hamana-sensei had a rather genial air–not that he’s ever unpleasant, mind you.

After supper, Sean and I paid a visit to our favorite local dōgu shop to see if we couldn’t relieve ourselves of some of the scholarship money Oiemoto had handed us on Wednesday. I finally picked up one of the tea person’s basic behind-the-scenes mizuya necessities: a sifter. Matcha is so fine that it packs itself tightly when you leave it alone for a while, so just before making tea it’s best to sift it. You can get an nicer, clump-free suspension in water much easier that way. Sure, you can get the desired results with a standard kitchen model, but I felt like shelling out a little extra for the kind common in the tea world: a tidy stainless steel lidded canister with a bamboo paddle for pushing the tea through the removable screen. More significantly, I acquired what I think of as my first real piece of temae gear; that is, not just the cheapest practice implement available–not something I’ll be looking to replace anytime soon with a better version. I bought a lacquered tray for doing bonryaku and chabako temae. Very basic, very useful. Very pretty. Standard black kakiawase with the bright red tsumagure rim. Not expensive. Just exactly what’s needed. Yes. I’m a little giddy over my new tray.

Late in the evening, Sean and Szymon and I put ourselves into a certain condition with a bottle of Polish vodka, and went for a long ramble around the neighborhood in the quiet small hours. Our stated aim was to locate Funaoka Hill, which is tricky even in broad daylight and sober; it’s a low enough rise that you can’t see it until you’re nearly on it, and no street runs directly to it. We circled until it rose black immediately ahead of us, by which time we didn’t feel like climbing it anymore, so we weaved our way home and to bed.

We all worked up a distressing sweat in our kimono on the 20-minute walk to the temple; this was handily the warmest day of the year so far. Matsunami-sensei met us at the east entrance, looking very official in his cream-colored kimono topped with a sheer black Chinese robe and a brown Buddhist patchwork bib-thing. We saw the giant wooden gate that Sen Rikyū paid to have restored: in the canonical myth, this led to his death by his own hand at the order of his lord Hideyoshi, who felt insulted at walking beneath the statue of Rikyū placed on the gate’s second story in recognition of his sponsorship of the restoration. This story may not be entirely true.

We entered the 400 year-old hōjō, the chief abbot’s traditional residence, through a dim and cavernous entrance hall kept cool by its stone floor. A row of fireplaces in a sooty hearth were shown to heat four colossal rice pots set into the raised floor of the adjoining kitchen. The building’s front porch looks out over a spacious, immaculate dry garden of white gravel raked into ripples and waves, and the porch itself responds to the pressure of feet not with squeaks but with the melancholy cries of the ghosts of birds: then ten of us walking across it elicited an otherworldly chorus.

In the hōjō of sub-temple Jukōin we saw two sets of famous sliding doors painted in the 16th century by two generations of the Kano school and now designated National Treasures. The rooms housing them look out on another dry garden of boulders and moss traditionally attributed to Sen no Rikyū, who also planted the ancestor of the sara tree that grows in the corner of the garden. Rikyū was one of Jukōin’s notable early patrons, and the temple has been ever since the “clan temple” (according to the English-language guide to Jukōin) for the three Sen lineages of tea masters.

We visited then the temple’s tiny cemetery, where a mossy and weathered stone pagoda marks Rikyū’s grave. We drew a bucket of cool water from a well and each splashed a dipper-full on the pagoda while Matsunami-sensei chanted in a low monotone; I myself rather doubted that the observance did much for the dead man one way or the other, but it was nice to see another tangible piece of tea history and to pay respects.

The morning ended at Matsunami-sensei’s residence, where we briefly sat to meditate in a bright and airy hall that I found more pleasant than the gloomy private chamber on the top floor of the Urasenke Center, except that here we were at the mercy of the mosquitoes that dined on my forehead and Tanja’s ears, and the large black ants making circular investigations of the cushions on which we sat. The subject of my own meditation was how much easier it is to sit seiza when you’ve got two big cushions wedged between your calves and thighs.

Out in the garden, Anita asked Matsunami-sensei about a big old block of carved stone sitting on the grass. “Side table for a barbecue,” he deadpanned.

Back at school and dripping hot again, we enjoyed an unusually delicious lunch of fried chicken chunks in a kind of thin sweet and sour sauce over rice, then resumed our koicha work with Imagawa-sensei. All I can say about my temae is that it wasn’t as bad as it was the first time through, though I couldn’t sit all the way through it; for some reason, all of us new students were concluding a Bad Knee Week.

Purifying the chaire requires a new feat of manual dexterity: the little finger of the left hand curves under the container to support it and the pointer finger stays straight while the two middle fingers spin the chaire against the fukusa held in the right hand. Imagawa-sensei recommended practicing the motion at home with an appropriately-shaped and sized liquor bottle from which we could swig between practice purifications.

After dark, most of us hung out for a while on the roof of the girls’ dorm, enjoying the warm night until the 10:00 building lockdown. Then Szymon, Sean and I, after our custom, took to our own roof with a case of chu-hi, where we ran into a Japanese student named Kei. The four of us attempted conversation and shared drinks and snacks until sometime in the wee hours, when we wobbled off in separate directions for some much-needed deep sleep with no setting of alarms required.

Tabi are like any footwear in that sizes vary according to manufacturer. Sadly, though the 500-yen pair I bought yesterday are labeled 27.5cm like my more expensive pair, they’re just fractionally too small for my feet.

The bicycle I’ve been riding around town probably sold new for around 8000 yen. I’ve already spent around 3000 replacing a tire, a tube, and a lock. Now the rusty, loose chain has gotten into the obnoxious habit of slipping off one sprocket or the other, or both, when I pedal too hard or hit bumps. Would it make more sense to buy a new 8000-yen bike than to keep dumping money into this old one?

A welcome return to cool and cloudy weather today. Sean and Szymon rode off in the morning to do temae at a tea event at the private tea room they’ve spent the last few weekends cleaning. I didn’t feel much inclined to head out anywhere on my own, so I stayed busy at home. I visited my student loan lender’s website to discover than my application for deferment while I’m in school here has been denied. What gives? Despite my monthly stipend, I’m not exactly rolling in cash over here. I may be able to work something out with my parents until I’m either earning money again or back in some lender-approved course of study.

The day darkened in the afternoon and a light rain deepened my lethargy until I gave up and took a short nap. Then I roused myself and walked Szymon’s bicycle up to the shop to have its tire and tube replaced (another 2580 yen) before riding out of town north along the Kamo with Steve-o Radio playing on the iPod. Clouds draped themselves over the mountaintops as the city thinned, roads narrowed, sidewalks disappeared, green spaces opened. Apartments and houses on the fringes look old, weathered, inexpensive; heavy industry operates at a remove from the urban center. Shortly before the city ended altogether in forested mountain slopes behind the melancholy steel towers of some sleeping factory, I ran out of obvious safe space to ride my bicycle; though traffic was light, I don’t know the rules of the road here and would prefer to stay out of trouble. I turned around and sped back along the river toward home to the memorable accompaniment of Iron Maiden’s “Run to the Hills.”

Then, finally, after a month here, I made it to the sentō. Going to a public bath was one of the highlights of my first trip to Japan, and I’d been looking forward to the opportunity to go again. My friend Victoria, a Midorikai alumnus, had provided Sean and me with a map of some of her favorite places in this neighborhood, including the “best sentō in Kyoto,” but between one thing and another we didn’t make time to investigate until now. Gaijin seem largely to be intimidated by the idea of soaking with a bunch of other naked people, but most people I know, once they work up the nerve to give it a try, get hooked.

We packed up our towels and soap, and followed Victoria’s map (and instructions from Sean’s Lonely Planet guide to the Kyoto, which seconds Victoria’s opinion about this being the best sentō in the city) to an unassuming little structure on a back street of cramped houses interspersed with convenience stores. Took off our shoes at the door and paid the lady at the front counter. (390 yen–about 4 bucks–for as long as you want to stay. Cheaper than a movie and more relaxing.) I had to ask which curtain guys were supposed to go through: blue or red. (Answer: blue.) Pushed through the curtain, got nekkid and stashed stuff in lockers in a straw mat-floored changing room decorated with ornate carved-wood panels that I didn’t examine closely. (Lonely Planet guesses they date back to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.) Smoking wasn’t allowed inside, but it sure had been once–the place had the warm musty smell of a half century of tobacco smoke permeating the woodwork. (A scent I’m partial to, actually. Reminds me of thrift stores and the Chieftain restaurant in Tacoma, Washington.) We scrubbed ourselves down at low washing stations, sitting on the tiny plastic stools that the Japanese always use for this purpose but that aren’t made with my particular legs in mind. Then we soaked.

We soaked in the big shallow hot bath and in the small deep really hot bath. We soaked in the bath with bubbles and jets and in the electrified bath. (Really. Panels in the walls emit some considerable charge. Depending on how close to them you move, you can get anything from a tingle to strong involuntary muscle contractions. I recommend it enthusiastically.) I soaked in the lukewarm bath under a cascade of water from the ceiling, and Sean spent some time in the sauna. We refreshed ourselves in the cold bath and then soaked in a fragrant cedar tub in an open-air courtyard with a dark pond where koi circled listlessly.

A trio of young boys practiced their English “hellos” on me and asked if I was a Canadian. When I admitted my Americanosity, I discovered that I was sitting next to a fellow Californian. Two little Japanese girls (this, like most sentō, was gender-segregated, but the very young can accompany their parents regardless) got curious about the big gaijin and followed me over to the cold tub. I lowered myself in, cringed, and squeaked, “tsumetai!” (“cold!”). The girls laughed and tested the water with their toes. “Tsumetai!,” they cried. I dunked my head and came up sputtering. “Brrrrrr!,” I trilled. “Brrrrrr!,” they echoed, delighted.

After an hour and a half or so we felt we had attained maximum soakage, so we dried off and got dressed and sort of floated back out into the street in a daze of relaxation. We flopped onto our bicycles and pedaled limply home. Very. Slowly. I stopped at Lawson for a tray of yakisoba topped with an omelette topped with ketchup and mayonnaise (another enthusiastic recommendation), which the girl behind the counter heated for me in the microwave.

Then, though we would have been happy enough to drift off into de-boned, tenderized sleep, we had a rooftop appointment to keep with Szymon and a bottle of plum wine and a jar of long tough strips of unidentified-sea-creature jerky that tasted like the smell of low tide and made me think of Manzanita beach on Maury Island, Washington. (Second Washington nostalgia reference in one post. My parents, I hope, will be pleased.) I brought up my little LED candles in their glass votive holders and decorated our nest atop the elevator shaft. It gave a cozy look to the scene but didn’t make the night any warmer.

The wine took care of that.

A man’s kimono isn’t a terribly involved thing to put on, but it takes a while if you’ve only tried it once before, like I had. (Womens’ kimono, on the other hand, can take even experienced wearers a good half hour to don.) First you slip on the long nagajūban robe and tie it shut with a strip of fabric wrapped around the waist. Then you put on the kimono itself, tying it shut with a second strip. Over that utilitarian fabric belt you tie the obi, which wraps around the waist several times. You knot it in front of you so you can see what you’re doing, then pull the knot around your body to the back. (This is cheating. Before the end of the year I had learned to tie my obi behind me, like a grownup. –edb, 06 May 2010)

Moving in a kimono is nothing like moving in western clothes. Those who have worn pencil skirts will know the feeling of having one’s steps constricted; hurrying anywhere is pretty much out of the question. Sitting, bending over, and kneeling are likewise regulated by the wraparound fabric, and the wide obi does much to encourage a good straight posture. The desks and chairs at school were made for small people, and I can’t any longer perform the leg contortions I’d devised to squeeze myself into them nicely. Sinking into and rising out of the seiza position in the tea room suddenly requires another level of strength and muscle control, as the legs must stay close together. But it looks so much more graceful than the way we were all doing it before, splaying our legs for balance.

Likewise, the kimono makes good posture while sitting seiza easier and more natural, and suddenly the physical language of tea preparation makes sense. The temae were created by tea people in kimono, and performing them in kimono feels very natural. It was strange to hold my knees while turning in trousers; now if I don’t, my kimono will open scandalously. The angles and movements of my arms, awkward in a shirt, now work with the cut and length of my sleeves. I felt all these difference in my own temae and saw them in the other students’.

The limitation on step length imposed by the kimono makes crossing the tatami in the appropriate number of steps a breeze. The split-toed tabi socks are odd but comfortable, and much better suited to the tatami than my white cotton socks were. Stepping into and out of zori sandals is quicker and easier than wrestling with shoes. And though I no longer have pockets, I have an enormous amount of storage space in the front of my kimono and in the sleeves, where various tea necessities fit comfortably.

We got many pleased looks from the Japanese students, our teachers, and the office workers at school. Except for our glaring non-Japanese-ness, we’re no longer the five odd ones out.

Hamana-sensei lectured more on tea in the month of May, covering seasonal flowers, the evolution of Children’s Day (formerly Boys’ Day), and some of the sweets that Gary-sensei mentioned yesterday. After lunch we resumed our hakobi usucha practice with Ro-sensei, who generally refrains from making corrections as long as host and guest both take every possible opportunity to say something polite. Yesterday his silence was comforting as I moved more or less confidently through the temae, getting the feel of doing it in kimono.

And I appreciated anything comforting after the panicked pre-practice rush to get flowers in the tokonoma. I’d only tagged along once before as Anita did the job; today I begged Szymon to walk me through it. Flowers intimidate me because I have no experience with them at all, and because there are right and wrong ways to arrange them for tea, but nobody’s explained it all clearly. Finally we got a big purple tessen blossom into a big, knobbly, hanging bamboo vase in the one room, and another large flower of some sort into a truly gargantuan and fairly hideous Shigaraki vase in the other.

Sean and I rode up to Vivre after dinner and bought tension rod shelves to maximize the potential storage space in our apartments. Then we repaired to the roof with Szymon for an end-of-the-week round of beer and sake. Naturally.

Classes today were held in the practice facility on the second floor of the women’s dorm, which contains one very large room (dozens of mats; the largest standard tea room has eight) and a 4.5-mat room in one elevated corner, open on two sides to the rest of the hall. Our morning lecture was on Noh theater: an elderly American expatriate who performs with a Noh school here in Kyoto walked us through some of the basic postures and movements, which of course are very stylized, awkward, and difficult, and nothing at all like the way we carry ourselves in the tea room.

After a fish lunch, we continued our bonryaku practice, today with Imagawa-sensei, who patiently attempted to get me to sit up straight while keeping my arms and shoulders relaxed. At least I was more confident with the basic order of the procedure than I was yesterday, and for some mysterious reason, my knees held up comparatively well all afternoon. We had beautiful sweets called sakuramochi: soft and sticky pebbled balls of translucent pink mochi wrapped in fragrant green leaves. The slender hanging bamboo flower vase held a little red tsubaki bud and an elegant twig of yukiyanagi studded with tiny white blossoms. All in all, it was a lovely afternoon–our most enjoyable and encouraging practice so far–and I bounced up to do my chores in a mood as merry as yesterday’s was morose.

Supper featured a breaded fried egg. Later, Sean and Szymon and I sat down together to have a beer and study a bit. Unfortunately, before we got to the studying part of our plan, Almerindo knocked on the door with beer of his own, the conversation ran wild, and Szymon ended up producing a dangerous succession of liquors from his personal stash. Innocent little tastes in sufficient quantity lost their innocence, and we all stumbled off to bed in conditions most unsuitable for a school night.