Guests proceed from yoritsuke to machiai to koshikake to roji to tea room, taking their cues to move forward from doors left open the width of a flat hand or the beckoning of an assistant. The yoritsuke is for changing into hakama and new tabi socks. In the machiai, there will be a scroll or artwork or what-have-you to admire, and a tabakobon to pass around and examine. This “tobacco tray” holds decorative smoking implements as signs of hospitality; guests admire the camellia pattern drawn in the carefully shaped ash beneath the live coal in the hiire, which once upon a time would have been used to light the pipe. The host’s assistant then brings out osayu, “honorable white hot water” (for some reason, heated water is said to have the color white), to cleanse the guests’ palates and give them a taste of the water that will be used to prepare the tea; they will later ask the host where it was specially drawn from.

The koshikake is traditionally a covered bench with sitting cushions and another tabakobon. From here the guests can see the host emerge from the nearby tea house to fill the tsukubai, the large stone basin, with fresh water. After the host has retreated, the guests one by one walk down the garden (roji) path, wash their hands and mouths at the tsukubai in the same fashion one uses at shrines and temples for purification, and enter the tea room, admiring scroll and flower before taking their seats. Then the host performs the charcoal arrangement procedure. Then a sweet is served. Then there’s a break. And only then is there actually, finally, tea.

It’ll be astonishing if we pull this off halfway gracefully.

Lunch was “hamburger steak” and spaghetti. Temae practice with Imagawa-sensei was embarrassing for all of the hangover-fogged men. Things that seemed easy yesterday we fumbled through today, and my knees weren’t amused. The general warming trend continued in spite of persistent rain, and my suit pants threatened to rip open at the crotch when I sat down without peeling them away from my sweaty legs. I managed to enjoy the aoyanagi sweets, round slices of dark red sweet bean paste wrapped in something pale green and fluffy, but otherwise I’d rather forget the afternoon.

And the evening, come to think of it. After supper, a kind of stewed vegetable mixture with a croquette on the side, Anita walked me through my first haigata. For bonryakudemae, the kettle sits on a small brazier called the binkake, supported by a three-pronged iron stand called, for some obscure reason, the “Five Virtues” (gotoku), the base of which is hidden beneath a layer of fine grey ash that must be coaxed into a specific shape before each use. (Hamana-sensei says that a proper ash formation helps draw air to keep the charcoal lit, but I suspect the procedure has more to do with attention to detail for its own sake; my chanoyu dictionary says that it “adds a nice visual ‘scene.’”) The ash-shape appropriate to the binkake consists of two parallel ridges with a gentle valley between them. Using the haisaji, you sculpt the front face of the first ridge, then cut its back face downward to make a sharp edge. Repeat to form the back ridge, then even out the center expanse, blending its edges into the slopes. The angles should be smooth and consistent, the ridges mirror images of each other, the surface of the ash as free from marks as possible. After a frustrating 45 minutes, I threw in the towel. My haigata was ugly, but it was my first attempt, and the previous night’s drinking had left me impatient and irritable.

I stomped home, wrote and did laundry, and fell asleep happily sober.

As I’ve mentioned, we begin and end our days with chores according to the tōban list. Today was the first day that we newbies didn’t have special activities in the morning or afternoon, so we got to follow our senpai around and learn. Anita and I were on mizuya-chō detail, in charge of the preparation area outside the tearoom. Before morning lecture we stopped into the school’s second-floor kitchen to bag up everything we’d need for practice later. Then we prepared sweets, tea, water, and a hot towel (oshibori) for our teacher. After class began with a bow, Anita brought in the sweets, retreated to whisk the tea, brought it in, disappeared once more, and returned carrying a tray with the towel, glass of water, and second kind of tea.

During the first lecture period Mittner-sensei explained Urasenke’s organizational structure to us. Most of her talk went not quite over, but definitely to one side of my head. Hamana-sensei dedicated the second lecture period to a round-table get-to-know-one-another session.

We lunched quickly on hayashi rice and hurried back to prepare for afternoon practice. The mizuya-chō retrieves the day’s special sweets from the kitchen along with the various trays and wooden picks needed to serve them, makes a mental note of the arrangement of the mizuya (everything must be cleaned and restored to its original position at the end of practice, and readies stacks of towels and chakin, the strips of linen used to clean tea bowls during temae.

Hamana-sensei taught us how to fold a fukusa and use it to symbolically purify the natsume and chashaku. Like everything in tea, this is harder than it looks–and done well, it looks beautiful. Dancers and some athletes know the kind of strength and control required to make a thing look effortless, but it was new to me. Posture and movement in tea, moreover, should communicate a feeling of peacefulness to the guest, and to let go of tension when one’s knees are screaming for mercy is no mean feat.

Before he dismissed us, Hamana-sensei helped us bend our copper haisaji (ash scoops) into their ideal shapes. Then we rejoined our senpai to help clean up. The mizuya-chō puts away everything he took out while making sure everyone else has done the same. Once all the dōgu have been cleaned and replaced, the head mizuya-chō for the whole practice facility is summoned; only after his review and approval can we leave.

We hurried back to our dorms to change into work clothes and then returned to school. The floor of the large room that hosted the opening ceremonies has been covered with dozens upon dozens of tatami to transform the space into a giant practice facility. Every day Midorikai is responsible for sweeping and wiping down all those tatami. We made short, fun work of it, though, and were soon over at the shokudō, eating nice broiled fish.

Sean and I needed more appropriate work clothes than jeans and t-shirts, so Szymon took us to a kimono shop to buy samue, the pajama-like working garments of Buddhist monks, and favored cleaning attire at Urasenke. (They would also make terrific pajamas, for that matter.) Then Sean and I stopped by the 100-yen shop to buy this and that. We realized on our way home that we hadn’t had a thing to drink since the airplane ride here a week before, so we popped into Lawson for some beer and holed up for the evening in Sean’s room.

Somebody had suggested soaking sore knees in hot water, so before I went to bed I used my big bathtub for the first time. Now I doubt I’ll go a night without a bath. It works magic on the joints and is just pleasantly relaxing in general. Warm, limber, and a happy distance from sobriety, I dropped off to sleep.