All the new students assembled in a second-floor classroom to wait. Seating was assigned; name tags were set out on the tables. These are long narrow clips of white plastic read vertically. We Midorikai students in our Western clothes hung ours on suit pockets, but the rest of the room were in kimono and so wore their name tags on their obi. For about fifty minutes we sat quietly, anxiously. Every so often a wrangler would appear to issue further instructions in Japanese. Tanawat is good enough with the language that he was able to assure us that none of the information was mission-critical.

We lined up in the hall outside shortly before the ceremony was to begin, climbed the stairs to the third floor, and entered the assembly room there to a long round of unbroken applause from administrators, teachers, parents, and second and third-year students. When all the new students had filed down the center of the room to find their seats, the Opening Ceremony began with the first of many bows in unison. Backs straight, fingertips reaching for knees, we slowly folded ourselves over to a slow mental count of three, held the position for three more, and rose to a final three. The room turned then in the direction of “Tea Mecca” (Hamana-sensei’s term)–a statue of Sen no Rikyū, who first codified our art and to whom the three major schools of tea practicing today trace their lineage–and recited a pledge to aspire to the highest standards and noblest ideas while doing tea in the Urasenke tradition.

Oiemoto, soft-spoken but imposing in his black kimono, gave a speech in which (Hamana-sensei paraphrased later) he compared us all to the flowers of the sakura. Now we are mere buds, but with diligence we may blossom. Presumably he went on to say something about the falling of the petals and transience–he is a Buddhist priest as well as a man of tea–but that’s just my guess.

There were more speeches and more bows, I executed my role in the proceedings without embarrassing myself impossibly, and suddenly we Midorikai students were lined up in the second-floor hallway again, waiting to receive our monthly stipend from the hand of Oiemoto himself. We were beckoned into his office as a group, and one by one were handed each an envelope containing a generous amount of cash in uncirculated bills–the Japanese don’t give each other dirty used money on formal occasions. I had been feeling relieved that bowing is the customary greeting in Japan, because my nervous hands were bloodless and cold; naturally, Oiemoto had to shake mine while welcoming me to Japan in English. I managed a bit of Japanese and tried very hard to exude genuine high-octane gratitude. And that was it. Until next month, and the next envelope.

It had begun to rain sometime during the ceremony; loaner umbrellas were located and we were herded over to a tea room somewhere to drink a bowl with a large-ish group of new students’ parents. The okashi–sweets that always precede tea to balance the drink’s bitterness–were the most remarkable I’ve ever seen: spongy cakes shaped like sakura leaves, delicately colored pink and white and touched with gold leaf at what would be the tree end. As I drank my tea, I listened to the rain on the roof and remembered that my first visit to a teahouse, my dear Jakuan at the University of Hawaii, where all this began, was on a rainy day. Ever since then, rain has been my favorite weather for tea, and I took it as a good sign that my first day of school at Urasenke should echo my first glimpse of this refined world.

Next we were allowed a brief, precious glimpse of Konnichian. Many times already I’ve bowed toward the “helmet gate.” Today we walked through it into a green garden glistening wet. We followed the curving path to the house, over three centuries old, and stepped out of our shoes and into history. Attendants pointed the way through the labyrinth of low, dim hallways, and we ducked our heads as we followed a carpet of green felt rolled out along the tatami to a tiny room containing only a shrine, perceived vaguely in the shadows, to the memory of Rikyū. We sat down and pulled ourselves respectfully across the threshold on our knees, had our moment with the dead, and then returned to the modern world–or as close to it as we get in around here.

It was good that our bowing muscles were warmed up, because more formal introductions awaited us at various points throughout the rest of the day: the staffs of two different offices, Sekine-san, who apparently has much to do with appropriating the budget for our little Midorikai program, and the cook in charge of the shokudō, who invited anyone in possession of a recipe from his or her own country that could serve 80 to send it along.

Lunch was provided in the second-floor classroom where our day began. We were treated to terribly elegant obentō (boxed lunches) from some not cheap place. Each large lacquered box was divided into four compartments, each of those containing an assortment of very traditional Japanese delicacies, very precisely arranged. (The garnish on one dish included a wisp of fern almost too small to be picked up with ohashi (chopsticks). Miso soup and tea were served separately.

Then, at last, we had a class. We began by observing our senpai as they prepared for the afternoon’s practice. I followed Anita around as she heated water for the kama (kettle), lit charcoal, and placed it in the tearoom’s sunken hearth. Then Hamana-sensei began our education officially by guiding us through the practice tea rooms. There are six, each executed in a subtly different style from the next, ranging in formality from elegant room 1 to rustic room 6. Sensei encouraged us to be attentive to the details in the architecture but simultaneously to cultivate a sensitivity to the more important feeling of each room.

Then he explained the arrangement of the mizuya (“water room”), the preparatory area outside the tea room itself. “A place for everything, and everything in its place” is the basic philosophy of mizuya organization. Three full-length shelves and a bottom shelf about one third as long hang over a bamboo drain grate set into the floor. On the grate itself and on the lowest shelf rest the dōgu that have to do with water, arranged carefully according to value. Above that are dōgu that have to do with tea, then the fire-related implements, and finally things that just aren’t used very frequently at all; the closer to you something is when you kneel in the mizuya, the more likely you are to be handling it often.

Szymon performed temae (the formal term for the ceremonial preparation of tea) for us then, his practiced fluid movements unlike anything I’ve seen done at Jakuan. Every step of the process seemed to uncoil like spring steel, controlled, a study in motion and rest under great control.

We finished with a tour of the large kitchen, where various dōgu are stored, okashi distributed, water heated, and charcoal lit. About thirty years ago, Sensei revealed to us, some drunk Midorikai students accidentally burned down the building that had then stood on this site, jeopardizing the future of the program. Ever since, we’ve had to be the most vigilant students of all where fire is concerned.

Sensei dismissed us with handouts full of procedures and endless lists of new words to be committed to memory. Then we hurried to the post office. Though our tuition is paid for, we are expected to give a small portion of our monthly stipend back to cover various material costs, and that means getting hold of shinsatsu (new bills). We had change made and submitted the fee to the teacher responsible for collecting it, and hurried over to the shokudō to eat tonkatsu. The rain still fell, but it hadn’t managed to absolutely strip the sakura trees of their blossoms, though lawns, shrines, and puddles were blanketed in soft pink and white petals.

After dinner, Sean, Tanawat and I went shopping at the 99-yen shop down the street: think of a classy dollar store with a much greater variety of merchandise. Then we returned to putter around the dorm and think over our full day before retiring.

Today all formality was expected. We put on our suits and reported to the Urasenke Center at 10:00 for an orientation meeting with Hamana-sensei. Or rather, everyone else did; I showed up a few minutes late after following Yo to her orientation meeting, which was not ours, which neither of us knew. As it’s already been made quite clear that tardiness is one of the deadly sins around here, I’m afraid I’ve not made the best possible first impression.

At 11:15 began the Dormitory Entrance Ceremony. The Japanese, of course, solemnize every possible occasion with a ceremony. This one looked like others I’ve seen on television: a crowd of dark suits sitting stiffly on folding chairs while speeches are made. Every new resident’s name was announced; one by one we stood and bowed. The ryōchō (“dorm chiefs”) were appointed and given certificates. A representative pledged on behalf of all the students to behave honorably according to all dormitory regulations or some such.

We broke for lunch (croquettes) and then rejoined Hamana-sensei to continue our orientation. We sat in one of the formal tea practice rooms while Hamana-sensei made plain the school’s expectations of us. (That we’ll behave and work hard, of course, but also that we’ll go on from here to continue in the study and spread of Tea in our home countries.)

The whole school (around eighty students in programs ranging from three months to three years in length) assembled again in the afternoon to rehearse for Monday’s big Opening Ceremony. By some unnerving combination of seating plan and alphabetical luck, I’ll be sitting at the very end of the very front row, directly in front of Oiemoto, the sixteenth head of the Urasenke organization. Worse yet, it will fall to me to join a group of five in front of the hall as Midorikai’s representative when we swear on behalf of our various contingents to do right by Tea, or whatever. (Seriously, I have no idea. I just know that after the guy to my right pipes down, I’m supposed to say, “Midorikai. Eric Boydston.”) Worst of all, I had to sign this beautifully handwritten document of fealty (or whatever) in my preschooler’s Japanese lettering, made worse by the fact that I was using a brush pen for the first time. Knowing that this physical evidence of my incompetence will survive somewhere for a long time to come bothers me.

Szymon led us to a nearby dōgu shop after rehearsal so that we could buy whatever we’ll need for Monday that we didn’t already own. I got a new stack of packets of kaishi paper (used for eating sweets and wiping tea bowl rims as a guest at a ceremony), a hand-sized square of embroidered fabric called a kobukusa (on the various uses of which I remain unclear), and a very small blunt knife called a kashikiri, which a guest uses to cut certain soft sweets into bite-sized pieces. We stopped then into one more shop for a set each of three flat copper spoons that we’ll use to manipulate the charcoal ash in our braziers into specific topographies.

All nine Midorikai students gathered a little later in Szymon’s room for informal bowls of tea and the introduction of the tōban list, a spreadsheet detailing our chore assignments for the next month. Our days will begin and end with cleaning and preparation, and we’ll cycle through the various duties so that everyone will get to/have to do everything. For the first week or so, though, we newbies will simply be paired up with senpai–our seniors in the program–to learn by watching.

Then Anita, Tanja, and Verena disappeared so that Szymon could make sure that we kohai (opposite of senpai) knew how to fill a natsume properly. The natsume is the small container in which a host brings out the powdered tea to be whisked with hot water into usucha, or thin tea. They come in various shapes, sizes, and materials, but the most common variety is a fist-sized lacquered box shaped something like a gumdrop. One fills the natsume scoop by careful scoop with a small bamboo spoon called a chashaku; the surface of the tea should at last form a gentle peak reminiscent of Mount Fuji that rises to the lip on which the natsume‘s lid will rest. This is is done so deliberately because, in the first place, everything in tea is done carefully for the sake of doing things carefully, and in the second place because one’s guest will likely ask to examine the natsume at the end of the ceremony; the skill with which tea has been put in and taken out will be assessed. Szymon had just declared all of our work satisfactory when Tanja phoned to ask if we’d like to go for a walk down to the river with her and Verena to see the sakura there.

Sean, Szymon, Nadia, and I joined the Finns and headed east for the river. Night proves to be no obstacle to hanami (flower viewing) in the Japanese mind. Part of the reason for this is that flowers are often more pretext than anything else where this activity is concerned; the party is the main thing. Large groups lounged around and talked and laughed and ate and drank on blue plastic tarps on both banks of the river. At least one party had brought its own generator and floodlights to illuminate the sakura tree they sat beneath.

Our path home wound through many little side streets and past many other gloriously blooming trees, many lit brightly in the night, all beginning to shake loose their petals in little fluttering storms that leave on the streets and sidewalks a festive confetti, as though Spring had been driven through the city in a ticker-tape parade. Hamana-sensei says it will rain on Monday. If it does, right now when the petals are letting go, it will bring a quick end to the pleasure of watching them fall at their leisure. And there may be something beautiful even in that deprivation.