Arguably not even a warm day, but as I’ve already established, with enough layers of polyester and a charcoal fire, the mildest weather can oppress! We’ve started burning mosquito repellent coils at the doors to the tea rooms. It does some good, but a few of the thirsty little bastards always make daring runs through the flak to torment us anyhow.

Gary-sensei stayed more or less on topic today; the topic was the chaji dish called mukōzuke: “(thing) stuck on over there.” As in, it’s on the far side of the tray set down in front of the guest. Rice and soup being on the near side. Even when he stays on topic, Gary-sensei’s encyclopedic knowledge within any given topic is enough to exhaust.

I came the closest I’ve come yet to keeping a cool head while arranging flowers for afternoon practice. Would have been positively frosty except that I was nearly finished with my arrangement when a Japanese student showed up to inform us that I was using a flower container that was needed elsewhere. Not that it had been set aside or marked in any way, mind you. I just narrowly avoided having a meltdown, got a new container, and started over again. Flowers looked atrocious, naturally, but I was cautiously proud of at least having arranged them atrociously all by myself. Progress!

Having actually practiced the day’s new temae in advance, I boldly volunteered to do it first in the afternoon. The gamble paid off. Hamana-sensei was clearly pleased that I more or less knew what I was doing, and I finished before I used up my daily allotment of seiza-sitting ability. Batting order in practice is something we all think about and negotiate over hard. Doing temae later means you get to watch and learn from other students’ performances, but it also means increased discomfort and less leeway from the teachers. Going earlier hurts less and gives you margin for error, at least on brand-new temae days, but it can still be a little scary.

Today we worked on a chabako variation called wakei, invented by Tantansai (Urasenke 14) for his son, who would go on to become Oiemoto and then Daisōshō, to be able to perform when he (the son) went off to war. It’s relatively simple, using two nested bowls to serve multiple guests quickly under almost any conditions–on the deck of an aircraft carrier, for instance. Daisōshō would apparently make tea for his kamikaze pilot friends as a farewell before they got into their planes, never to return. I don’t wonder that he dedicated himself so thoroughly to pacifism after he made it home alive himself.

Well, I just adore the tidy and efficient little chabako box. I love unpacking everything and making tea with a relative minimum of fuss and then repacking everything. (The next time I see you, reader, it will almost certainly be the chabako that I use to make tea for you.) So I had a fine afternoon.

Cleaning, supper, and what is rapidly becoming the new norm around these parts: homework. Evening preparation for the morrow. Our pace quickens, probably never to let up again.

To actually apply oneself to the study of tea is largely to leave one’s fancies behind, of course. The effect we aim to create is the product of endless hours—years, lifetimes—of sheer unromantic effort: repetition, discomfort, mistakes corrected, pride swallowed. What happens in the tea room can only happen because tea is an all-consuming way (or Way) of life, requiring the cultivation of attitudes and habits that govern one’s behavior at all times and everywhere. In twenty minutes a host can perform a simple temae, serving sweets and tea to a guest, but those twenty minutes are preceded and followed by hours of cleaning, flower arranging, natsume filling, ash sculpting, charcoal tending, dishwashing.

Life in Midorikai is life in a largely drab corner of a modern city. Never mind the kimono we wear, the old temple we walk through on our way to school—we report for lectures to a modern building. We light charcoal on a gas stove. I do my laundry in a washing machine in an apartment wired for cable television. And even the kimono and temples and tea rooms have long since become familiar, non-exotic places and things.

As is often the case, though, the reality proves more interesting and rewarding than the illusion. Tea as a performance just feeds gaijin appetites for Otherness. Tea as a discipline builds character and knowledge and physical control and sensory awareness and a host of other qualities.

But it occurred to me today that to be broken of illusions (not, mind you, that I think I myself was ever particularly starry-eyed about tea—but who’d cop to such a thing anyhow?) and to commit to the discipline is, in the end, to be able to reproduce and enjoy on a deeper level that same magic that drew me back to Jakuan after my first visit; we end where we began, in the simplicity on the far side of complexity.

The occasion for my ruminations was a kenchashiki—ritual tea offering—at Kenninji, one of the five landmark Buddhist temples in Kyoto: the “five mountains,” they’re called. In sum, the day was everything romantic and picturesque that you yourself can likely call to mind in association with Japan and temples and tea: clean, austere buildings of white walls and dark wood; cavernous sacred spaces with flickering candles and rich fabrics and Buddhas staring from the shadows; rain falling on precisely raked expanses of gravel and mossy boulders; a candy-box of beautiful women in pastel kimono; men upright and dignified in their plain colors and hakama; a meal of delicate vegetarian cuisine arranged artfully in laquered boxes; good tea made well and served with exquisite sweets; a parade of ancient and precious dōgu passing before our eyes and through our hands.

Most of what I wrote concerning April’s kenchashiki at Hokuku Jinja applies to this day’s ceremony; the differences came from the fact that that was a Shinto function, this a Buddhist one. The proceedings at Kenninji took place in the temple’s dim hatto—central lecture hall—rather than under an airy pavilion. Instead of funny hats, the priests wore absolutely riotous shoes: colorful puffy padded things twice the size of their feet and approximately the shape of old Dutch wooden shoes with pointy toes. The tea was made on a formal black-and-red-lacquered daisu stand instead of on the plain wood daisu of the Shinto ceremony.

The hall filled with participants and onlookers; a gagaku trio began its melancholy drone. Almost exactly at the commencement of the ceremony, a mighty wind sprang up out of nowhere, howling across the grounds and making candle flames gutter, which was creepy. A huge contingent of priests did any number of things I couldn’t see through the colossal wooden support pillar in front of me; presumably they were directed toward the tall, ornate, fabric-draped, candlelit shrine in the middle of the room.

Incredibly, I had a nearly unimpeded view of the tea preparation. Not Oiemoto this time but Daisōshō approached first a lower table next to the daisu to do something possibly involving incense with a small white ceramic container. Then he retrieved a sumitorikago—charcoal-carrying basket—and haiki, and began sumidemae. On the bottom shelf of the daisu sat a matching set (kaigu) of implements in yellow-glazed ceramic with raised designs I couldn’t make out from my distance: mizusashi, kensui, futaoki, and shakutate (vase-like stand for the hishaku, today also containing the hibashi—chopsticks for working with fire). The kama was of the type called kirikake, shaped to sit directly on the mouth of the furo instead of on iron prongs within; the furo was a vaguely extraterrestrial turnip-shaped thing called a ryūkyūburo that sat on streamlined legs of a piece with the brazier’s body, and had lifting rings (kan) attached to its sides.

Daisōshō removed the kama from the furo, resting it on a thick pad of folded white paper, took the feather duster (habōki; not a fluffy clump but three large, beautiful feathers bound together) from the top shelf of the daisu and the hibashi from the shakutate, and added charcoal to the brazier, moving with speed and grace incredible to the viewer who’d wrestled with the same procedure for the first time just days before to such frustration.

With the kama replaced, Daisōshō was ready to make tea. He brought in a container with chakin, chashaku, and chasen, and took down the black tenmoku bowl on its stand from the top of the daisu, along with the wooden tray bearing a plain wood natsume in a white fabric pouch. He moved quickly and with the appearance of effortlessness. I noted with interest that he seems to favor vertical motion—bringing his white fukusa up and down in front of him when folding it to tuck away in his obi, for instance. I marked as well the moment when he reached to remove the kettle lid and his fukusa fell out of its careful folding: no flinch, no grimace; he just refolded it and proceeded. I remembered that the quality of a temae isn’t ultimately measured by its technical perfection or freedom from undesired incedent.

As soon as the tea was made and handed over to the priests, a crack team of tea people quickly, silently, and efficiently spirited away the entire setup while the religiosity proceeded. Once the offering had been made, the gagaku ensemble went silent and the dozens of priests began to chant, walk serpentine patterns across the open floor in front of the Buddha statue, stop for chant solos, resume group activities, whack the bejeezus out of enormous bronze bowls, and rub dull cymbals together. This went on for what felt like about 72 hours while my eyes grew heavy and my metal folding chair won an argument with my backside. And then, rather abruptly, it ended.

Feeling continued gratitude for the cool weather—our good kimono are all rather heavy—we walked out of the hatto and toward tea. The first seating, alas, exhausted most of our limited gaijin seiza-sitting ability—and that before we even got to the tea room. We waited in two successive machiai for an unimaginably long time, and were finally admitted to the seki proper with sore legs. We did appreciate the scroll in the second machiai, though: a square, a triangle, and a circle, roughly brushed in black ink. Imagawa-sensei, our chaperone for the day, explained that Zen categorizes everything in existence as one or another of those shapes.

A few dozen guests crowded at last into the tea room, where the scroll read something like “one thousand valleys, one lone person,” and a flower called shirafuji rested in a very substantial hanging bamboo hanaire A reddish lacquered maple tana of a variety apparently called kashin and favored by Oiemoto sat next to a chōsenburo, a brazier much like the ryūkyūburo but lacking kan. On the bottom shelf of the tana sat a roundish (perhaps classifiable as imogashira—potato-shaped) white porcelain sometsuke mizusashi with a phoenix painted in in blue.

The teishu entered, followed by a friendly and chatty old woman acting as hantō, and made tea with her back to me, so I can’t tell you much about that. Delicious pale green chakinshibori sweets were served; tea followed. Then, to the delight of my mind, hands, and eyes, but to the dismay of my knees, a parade of exquisite dōgu began to make its way around the room for inspection.

There was the lid of a wooden incense box, Chinese, spinning top-shaped, inscribed with the cipher of the 5^th Urasenke Iemoto (Fukyūsai; 1673-1704). The black laquered Rikyū-gata natsume by the eighth Nakamura Sōtetsu (1829-1884). The pointed-tipped chashaku called “wakakaede” (young maple) carved by Gengensai, the 11^th Urasenke Iemoto (1810-1877). Three tea bowls: a red Raku called “kokei” by the 8^th Raku master (Tokunyū; 1745-1774); a Hagi bowl in the ido, or “well” shape; a Karatsu bowl named “aoyama.” And two delightful bowls for sweets (kashibachi), one white porcelain, the other grey celadon, both with embossed floral patterns and silver rims.

From there we crossed the temple grounds again to have lunch—as I wrote previously: very pretty and rather tasty vegetarian food in almost-too-pretty-to-eat arrangements in lacquered boxes. A light rain had begun sometime after the kenchashiki, and by the time we finished eating, it was coming down steadily. We crossed a chirping nightingale floor in our tabi; marvelled at little mossy courtyards and glimpses into rooms with painted fusuma; and pondered the wet, white rock garden.

And once again we were off (the word for what we were doing is sekimawari: going around to multiple seatings), to the final tea gathering of the day. We weren’t kept long in the machiai for this one—just long enough to enjoy the scroll: a painting of a frog leaping from a riverbank into the water. Then we were welcomed into the tea room, less than twenty of us, all told. The room: tatami with additional straw mats arranged atop. A tokonoma with a wall cut away in a curve from the large main post (tokobashira). An integrated shoin writing desk. And a whopping great air conditioner set into the wall above the temaeza. Today it interfered with the aesthetic; if I visited a month from now I’d think it a beautiful ornament to the room.

On the shoin sat a kamashiki (folded paper kettle mat referred to earlier); on the kamashiki sat an Ikkanbari (laquered paper) incense box: small, rectangular, hangoken written on the lid, a favored item of Sen Sōtan. The scroll: “the pine tree never changes color” (loosely); calligraphy by Daisōshō; painting of a pine tree by a previous abbot of Kenninji. On the floor of the toko: a Chinese basket containing a white tessen flower, frilly nadeshiko, and pink sprays of shoma.

The teishu made tea on a long black lacquered board called a nagaita (literally: long board). From a squat furo, a tall katatsuki unryūgama rose vertically like a stovepipe. Next to it sat a Ming-dynasty akae (red paintings, along with blue) bowl serving as mizusashi.

There were more astonishing sweets: green bean paste suspended in clear kuzu. There was tea in white Asahiyaki bowls. Finally there was the opportunity to approach the end of the room to look at—not to touch—the valuable dōgu. Black Raku chawan by the 4^th Raku (Ichinyū; 1640-1696). Ido-shaped Asahiyaki bowl that looked like Karatsu. (And no, I don’t know the difference anyhow. Yet.) Small-sized Rikyū-gata natsume with the cipher of the 6^th Urasenke Iemoto (Rikkansai; 1694-1726). Chashaku by Oiemoto, named Unshin.

Then back out into the rain, past a memorial to Yōsai, the temple’s founder and importer to Japan of both Zen and tea, into taxis, and home. To eat, to do laundry, to use 2,000 perfectly good words in the service of another barely-focused and badly-in-need-of-editing ramble. Your indulgence, as always, is much appreciated.

Daisōshō, the retired (though still very active) 15th generation Grand Master of the Urasenke line, had given all the students tickets to the annual Miyako Odori dance presentation (this year’s was the 136th), so in the afternoon, Midorikai got dressed up once again and hailed taxis to take us to Gion, Kyoto’s old geiko (the local term for geisha) district. Automobiles and pedestrians vied for passage through the narrow streets of two-story wooden buildings, made considerably less charming by the addition of temporary signposts in garish oranges and grays advertising the odori.

Our tickets admitted us to the Gionkobu Kaburenjo theater complex, a handsome old cluster of buildings through which attendants herd four performances’ worth of visitors a day every day in April. We tramped across the blue-carpeted floors and down halls bright with circus-like red and white-striped wall hangings. A hundred or so at a time, deluxe ticket holders like us were funneled up a flight of stairs into a large room full of low, long tables and stools. At the front of the room, a geiko in full makeup and kimono was preparing tea in a style called ryūrei, developed in the late 19th century for the benefit of foreigners who couldn’t or wouldn’t sit on the floor in traditional seiza style. In ryūrei, host and guests alike sit like Westerners; it’s a lot more comfortable, of course, but it looked silly to me, and somehow more self-consciously mannered than the older styles. It didn’t help that the huge crowd kept cameras firing throughout; that a mobile phone some rows over rang halfway through with the title music from Austin Powers; that an efficient fleet of assistants distributed sweets and tea perfunctorily without any of the expected formalities of phrase and gesture; that as soon as our empty tea bowls were taken away, wranglers instructed us loudly to leave as quickly as possible to make room for the next lot of guests; that a few sips of my tea revealed an unwhisked lump clinging malignantly to the bottom of the bowl. On the other hand, we got to keep the rather pretty little plates our sweets were served on.

Next we got a brief glimpse of the lovely garden in the complex’s open central courtyard before we reached the waiting lobby for the show itself, where a good dozen vendors sold souvenirs, tea, sweets, books, elegant stationery, gaudy fabrics, and any number of things stamped with the likeness of unofficial national deity Hello Kitty.

The theater itself was large and richly appointed with comfortable seats in dark red velvet on the main floor and balcony, and tatami mats in the galleries for holders of less expensive tickets. The hour-long performance featured a dozen or so live musicians on either side of the front of the hall–shamisen to stage left, drums and shrill flutes (I can’t be expected to know the Japanese name of absolutely everything, can I?) to the right–maintaining a near-constant backdrop of the traditional-sounding noise that I don’t expect to ever acquire an appreciation of. (It wasn’t always obvious to my ears, to begin with, that both sides of the orchestra were in fact attempting to execute the same piece of music.) One, and sometimes all, of the shamisen players sang a text that doubtless shed great light for Japanese speakers on what was happening onstage; the percussionists would periodically do some call-and-response rhythmic shouting.

I don’t get Japanese dance any more than I get Japanese music. I appreciate the elegant movement and precise body control, but after five or so minutes of it, I feel like the point has been made. A working knowledge of Japanese and consequent ability to follow what plot was being suggested onstage (the program said it had been adapted from The Tale of Genji, the world’s oldest surviving novel and a product of proud Japan, which is celebrating the thousandth anniversary of the book’s publication this year) would probably have helped. As it was, I had to settle for enjoying the dazzling kimono and clever scene changes; happily, there was quite a lot there to enjoy. Also from time to time I would amuse myself by trying to imagine what various of the dancers looked like with her hair down and makeup off.

Szymon, Verena and I saved money and got exercise by walking back to the dorms. It took us about an hour at a brisk pace that I really shouldn’t have attempted in dress shoes; we followed the Kamo river most of the way uptown. The early evening had brought grey skies and a biting wind, but young couples, amateur photographers, and one inexplicable trombonist crowded the river’s steep brick banks, while a few late hanami parties soldiered on beneath much-thinned sakura.

Sean and I took a bus down Horikawa to a long shopping arcade called Sanjō that had been recommended to us, only to find that almost all its merchants had closed up before 7 on a Saturday night. We bought takoyaki for supper from one of the few open businesses and hit up a 100-yen shop for snacks and the sorts of housewares that we’re still discovering we need after a week and a half in our new home. And then we drank beer and listened to the Beach Boys in Sean’s room until bedtime.