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.

Hamana-sensei gave us the first in a series of lectures designed to instill in us an appreciation of Japanese seasonal awareness. Today we learned about the month of May. Traditionally, the 5th or 6th of the month is considered to be the first day of summer. Many festivals related to agriculture will take place across the country, and chatsumi, the harvesting of tea, will be done just as the leaves have matured enough to be picked but are still soft and have not developed any tannins. Within hours of hand-picking, the leaves must be steamed and dried to preserve color and flavor. Then they’ll be cut small and blended; they won’t be ground into powder for many more months.

Centuries ago, when tea production required even more manual labor (the leaves were steamed in bamboo baskets in small batches and dried one by one, held over heat with chopsticks), it was fabulously expensive, and the tea fields of Uji, the source of Japan’s finest tea, were under the direct control of the shogunate. Written records from 1633 mention the Chatsubo Dōchū, the Procession of the Tea Jar, in which the shogun would demonstrate his wealth and influence by dispatching several hundred people to carry packed tea with great pomp from Uji to Edo (now Tokyo), where he resided. Commoners along the road were required to respect the great ceramic containers as they would the shogun himself, prostrating themselves and averting their eyes.

I ate udon for lunch and then went to my humiliation. Despite having achieved some rough competence with the bonryaku procedure a year ago, I might as well not ever have even seen it done before. My fingers are clumsy, my fukusa folding sloppy. I don’t keep my back and neck straight; my shoulders and arms are tense and not round enough. I can’t even remember the simple order of operations. And my knees hurt.

If that weren’t enough, I embarrassed myself by spacing out and creating extra work for a classmate. In tea, if the guest doesn’t, at a specific moment after having returned his empty bowl to the host, ask her to clean up and finish, protocol dictates that she simply make him another bowl of tea. Of course, I was guest, and was watching Nadia’s temae absentmindedly when Hamana-sensei said, unimpressed, “Looks like you’re getting another bowl of tea,” and I realized that I’d missed that specific moment. I apologized immediately, wishing I could claw my way down into the fragrant tatami and disappear, and Sensei observed that, having made the mistake, I’m much less likely to make it again. Which is how many of the best lessons are learned, which doesn’t make me like it any better.

My bad mood dogged me for the rest of the day. Teachers are beginning to wonder aloud why we’re still wearing western clothes. The reason is that we have no idea how to buy kimono, so we really need senpai to accompany us, but they’re all busy, and the shops close before we’re done with our chores. This weekend looks to be free, so we’ll likely get outfitted then; on account of my big frame and general American fatness, I’ll probably not be able to fit an affordable ready-made kimono and will have to pay dearly for a custom-tailored one. (The kimono we were measured for last week, the one the school is giving us, is to be worn for special occasions; we’re expected to buy our own practice wardrobes.)

Sean and Tanawat and I did make one last effort to clothe ourselves without help: after a supper of fish, we biked down to a department store that had been recommended to us, only to find that it stocked only a useless token selection of men’s kimono anyhow. Later Sean and I rode down to Shijō in search of a few accessories shops he’d found in a Kyoto guidebook. All we found was that his guidebook is out of date. So we declared ourselves beaten, and returned home to get some sleep.