I am insured now for the first time in years. This morning we took care of one of our last procedural errands, walking down to the ward office again and walking out with National Health Insurance identification cards. Apparently it’ll cost me around $200 for a year of coverage. Somebody back home ought to look into this.

Class this morning was a lecture from Gary-sensei, who grew up in Texas and whose path to Tea began when his father bought him a Japanese sword, easily obtainable after the war when GIs had brought them home as souvenirs, and told him to learn everything he could about it. Gary-sensei knows so much about tea that he has trouble staying on topic; every subject suggests interesting tangents that he’s able and eager to pursue. He implored us to never again use the phrase “tea ceremony,” so from here on out it’s chadō, chanoyu, or just plain “tea.” He will be primarily teaching us about chaji, big tea functions, of which there are seven main types enabling hundreds of variations. Today, though, his main topic, so far as he had one, was the various stuff that one carries in the front of one’s kimono (“kaichū”) for tea purposes.

Kaishi is the white paper in a folded pad off of which one eats sweets before tea. It’s also used for wiping fingers, and tea bowls if necessary, and you can even put it to its earliest historical use by writing on it. The fukusa is a square of thick silk fabric (called shioze, after the student of Sen no Rikyū’s who first decided to make fukusas out of it) used by a host to symbolically purify the dōgu when making tea. In the Urasenke tradition, men’s fukusas are purple and women’s are red or orange, except on special occasions. Midorikai has special permission to use green fukusas when hosting tea functions, and Oiemoto uses a white fukusa when making ritual kencha tea offerings to Buddhas or gods or dead people. The fukusa is worn on the host’s obi during tea; the story goes that one of Rikyū’s predecessors started this custom after seeing the decorative girdle pendants that the Chinese would wear when hosting parties.

The kobukusa I’ve written about before and have little further insight into now. When bringing someone a bowl of tea without doing temae, it’s customary to cover your left palm with the kobukusa before setting the bowl on it. Gary-sensei recommends carrying at least two kobukusa of different levels of formality at all times, to be prepared for any eventuality.

Finally, the sensū is a small fan that isn’t used for fanning. Like the ropes and folded strips of white paper that designate purified areas at Shinto shrines, the fan is a kekkai, a thing that ties worlds together: in this case the worlds are people. We hold the sensū in our right hand when meeting people formally, set it on the tatami in front of us when greeting and thanking each other at the beginning and end of tea, and leave it behind us to mark our space on the mat when moving to receive a bowl of tea from the host.

We broke for a lunch of pork and vegetables, then spent the afternoon learning from Hamana-sensei how to sit, stand, walk, and open and close doors in the tea room. The postures required are all very tiring to muscles that haven’t had to maintain them before; even in Hawaii Sean and I were rarely corrected so exactly as we were today. For the second day in a row I ended the afternoon with my knees complaining loudly. For the last few months my biggest fear has been that my old joints will simply not hold up to the stresses here, and that I’ll be sent home early when I can no longer sit properly. My senpai’s assurances that I’ll get used to the pain have not helped much in light of various senseis’ grave admonitions to take the great care of our knees. It’s very difficult to stay focused while carrying around this fear, but I can do more than take things one day at a time and deal with circumstances when they present themselves. And if one of those circumstances turns out to be that my body betrays me and I can’t finish the program, at least it won’t come as a total surprise.

After class we were measured for the custom-made kimonos we’ll be given. The tailor covered a table with fabric samples and let us choose the color of our kimonos, their linings, and their obi. The women also chose a small symbol to be embroidered on the upper back (traditionally a Japanese family crest), and the men picked a color for their hakama, the trousers men wear with kimono on occasion.

Dinner was some tasty breaded mystery meat. Afterwards, we rested.

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.