A long, broad flight of stone steps climbs the hillside to the tomb, hidden in deep foliage. At its foot sits a spacious wooden pavilion. Today folded white strips of paper hung from a rope strung around the structure just below the roof line to signify ritual purity within its perimeter. On either side of the pavilion, tarps sheltered the spectators’ seats: on one side, wealthy and influential individuals, mostly older men in dark suits (Hamana-sensei pointed out a kama-maker to me); on the other, 3rd-year Japanese Urasenke students and the Midorikai group, five of us still in western clothes, the rest in a restrained kaleidoscope of kimono. The crowd numbered just over a hundred in all.

Beneath the pavilion, an elevated stretch of tatami led to a setup for temae: an stand of unfinished wood called a daisu, bearing on its top shelf two tenmoku chawan–tea bowls, one gold, the other silver, on individual stands–and two natsume enclosed in white cloth covers closed with braided cords, one purple, the other crimson, in elegant knots. On the daisu’s bottom shelf were the fresh water container (mizusashi), a bamboo dipper (hishaku) held vertically in its own rack, and the steaming kama.

To the right of the tatami platform sat several small wooden tables bearing platters of food offerings: fish, fruit and vegetables, mochi, water, sake, rice.

The crowd took their seats and quieted down as Oiemoto, his wife, and a small entourage approached the pavilion and were greeted by a group of Shinto priests in colorful outfits topped by hats resembling oven mitts made of giant avocados. Three musicians in similar attire took their places before ancient, ornate instruments at the back of the pavilion (the side furthest from the steps to Hideyoshi’s tomb, that is) and began to play the ancient music called gakaku on percussion and small wind instruments. (One, a silver-bound cluster of bamboo set vertically, allows the player to maintain a drone of subtly shifting unearthly chords that underpins the arrangements.)

One priest read an invocation, another purified each participant in the ceremony (including us, the witnesses) in turn with a shaggy pom-pom of folded paper strips on a stick. Then Oiemoto, in black kimono, stepped out of his zori and onto the tatami. He approached the daisu, facing Hideyoshi’s tomb, sat, and prepared koicha, thick tea. I could see few of his movements from behind the Japanese students and priests, but I did see him don a white surgical mask just before opening the natsume, not to take it off again until the tea was whisked and he’d re-covered the bowl with a thin sheet of what I assumed was wood; Hamana-sensei explained that human breath would be thought to befoul the tea and make it unfit to offer the kami-sama. I saw enough, too, to begin to understand a bit of tea philosophy that came my way recently.

There is a collection of a hundred short verses attributed to Sen Rikyū that outlines many of the ideals of our discipline. One of them is translated, “Practice constitutes learning from one, becoming cognizant of ten, then returning from ten to one, the beginning.” Which reminds me of a certain Christian philosopher’s (Francis Schaeffer, maybe?) pursuit of “the simplicity on the far side of complexity.” At any rate, I’ve seen clumsy and hesitant temae (heck, I do clumsy and hesitant temae), and I’ve seen confident and elegant temae. But Oiemoto’s movements were so controlled, so understated and precise, that his preparation looked quite effortless–not mannered in the slightest. Someone who didn’t know what he was watching might well think that there wasn’t much to making tea in this fashion. Which, of course, is the whole idea. All the practice, all the discipline, all the kata are ultimately not for performance but for hospitality: one person making tea for another.

Oiemoto went on to make thin tea, usucha, with the variations in technique required, and, of course, with the mask, and both bowls of tea were delivered to the priests, who set them on a table at Hideyoshi’s side of the pavilion and uncovered each briefly to allow his spirit to imbibe. The priests also moved the food offerings from the side of the pavilion to its front, and everything was officially handed over to the kami-sama for his enjoyment.

After another invocation and more eerie music, the ceremony concluded, and as the crowd filed out and the dōgu were cleaned and boxed up, Oiemoto gathered the Urasenke students around him and spoke briefly on the history of the kencha tea offering and the utensils traditionally used. (When performed at Buddhist temples, the preparation calls for fine lacquered dōgu; at Shinto shrines, unvarnished wood ones.) He invited us, too, to examine the dōgu. I admired the bare wood natsume, one’s lid marked with Oiemoto’s crest, the ichō leaf, the other with Okusama’s, a simple spiral.

We repaired to a giant cloth tent erected on a nearby lawn too late to keep the ground from getting soggy, and sat on benches while we were served sweets and tea by girls with muddy tabi. Then Hamana-sensei led us to a tea house neighboring the shrine, where we waited in a little machiai and admired a small collection of dōgu: everyone liked very much the dark red chawan by the ninth-generation head of the Raku ceramics tradition and the broken-and-repaired kettle. Its kantsuki, the small molded rings through which larger rings (kan) are threaded to lift the kettle were shaped like little monkeys with arms outstretched; we heard that this may have been a reference to Hideyoshi, a homely little man whose nickname was “monkey.”

The we were summoned into the tea room. As we began to eat our sweets (hanaikada, slender bars of translucent lavender mochi filled with red bean paste), a quiet gasp ran around the room: Oiemoto had just entered. He told us, apparently, to relax, warned us that the sweets were a bit chewy, and talked at us for a while. (I never did get a translation.) On his way out, he looked at me and asked if the sweets had been okay. I managed a frantic affirmative nod.

After tea, we moved further through the complex of tatami-floored buildings and sat in another room where a light meal, tenshin, was served. If I ever have to feed someone and want them not to linger, I decided, I’ll have them eat sitting seiza. The traditional Japanese food (rice; miso soup; little shrimp with crispy legs and feelers intact, to be eaten whole; assorted little mystery bites of egg and tofu and thins from the sea; tea) was quite tasty, of course, but I had no idea if I was eating it with any degree of decorum. Nor did I remember what Gary-sensei had told us a week before: that at the end of such a meal, the guests are to blot their dishes clean with kaishi paper moistened in the condensation from the lid of the soup bowl. I did this in a panic just before my tray was taken away, and staggered out of the room with knees screaming and suit pockets bulging with dirty wads of paper.

Since we had the afternoon free, Hamana-sensei decided to take us to Ginkakuji, the temple that was once the private villa of retired shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa, who took office at age 8 and quit at 29 to become a monk and full-time devotee and patron of the arts. The main temple building was in the third month or so of a projected 26-month renovation, and so was being disassembled under tarps, but the gardens remained stunning, as did the main reason for our visit: tours were being given of one of the complex’s usually-closed buildings, the Tōgudō, besides the tarped Kannon Hall the only structure on the property never destroyed by fire. In the Tōgudō is Yoshimasa’s personal study, a room named Dōjinsai, which is considered to be the prototype for the later development of tea room architecture. It is an old-style shōin room, not a tea room, and so has a built-in writing desk under a window and split-level shelves (chigaidana) instead of a tokonoma, but its four and a half tatami mats and ro, and the fact that Yoshimasa did apparently make tea in the room, make it part of our history.

We hiked up the hillside at the edge of the property to see chanoi, the spring from which Yoshimasa drew his water for tea, and enjoyed the elevated view of the city to the west. Then we exited via the gift shop and Hamana-sensei bought us all green tea-flavored soft-serve ice cream before we took taxis home.

I had stashed some unclaimed sandwiches and ate one for dinner instead of going to the shokudō. Then I met Sean, Szymon, and a few of the others to visit a local kimono shop, where we didn’t buy anything. We took the long way home, stopping by a cheap dōgu shop of Szymon’s recommendation that offers ludicrous discounts to Midorikai students; we picked up cheap chasen and chashaku to practice with, and chakin and little plastic pouches to keep damp chakin in for Monday’s practice chaji, at which we’ll have thick tea, which is served in a common bowl that should have its rim wiped by each guest after drinking and before passing it along. At a shoe store I picked up some zori sandals; thank goodness sizes big enough for my feet are available here.

Buying dōgu is what passes for Friday night excitement around here, so having done that, we were in for the evening.

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.

The building itself seems to be on Japan’s historic place register, whatever that’s called. (A dim memory suggests “Tangible Cultural Asset.”) Or so I interpreted the plaque on the corner, without actually bothering to find out if I could read any of it. Entirely church-y and lovely, if not particularly inspired, inside and out. I walked in behind a Korean couple toting a baby boy, and followed them up the aisle; the congregation for the service was small enough to fit in the choir. There were twenty or so in attendance: two or three Japanese, a Chinese woman, the Koreans, a vacationing Australian couple, a few Brits. The priest was American, as was the fellow who accompanied the hymns on recorder.

I was just getting over my social discomfort and beginning to feel happy I’d shown up when things went south. I should explain that, as a semi-closeted arch-conservative, I have little tolerance for liberalism in religion; I’d rather spend time with, say, a Muslim who disagreed fiercely but cordially with me than someone who maintains the forms of Christianity but won’t assert its content. This makes me nearly allergic to Western Episcopalians. I had hoped, though, that a small overseas congregation in a profoundly un-Christian country might be composed of more staunch believers; otherwise, I thought, what would be the point? You certainly don’t have to go to church to keep up appearances around here.

Of course I was disappointed. And in a hurry, too, right after the Scripture readings. The order of worship read, as expected, “sermon.” Which is precisely what the priest proceeded not to deliver. So help me, he stood up and said, “Now, what do you get out of those readings?” It wasn’t an ill-conceived game of guess-what’s-in-my-head serving as a segue into a lesson on something we should have gotten out of the readings. It was twenty minutes of three congregants batting around ideas that ranged from inane to heretical while the priest agreed with everything and the rest of us stared uncomfortably at our shoes.

The Old Testament reading from Nehemiah, which remembers God’s taking of land away from pagan peoples to give it to the Israelites, prompted the elderly British gentleman to my left to launch into a harangue on the importance of remembering the plight of those pagan peoples, whom, in his view, Israel was actually guilty of “repressing.” Also he worked in a jab at the United States’ treatment of Native Americans, which in his mind was related. The New Testament reading, the account from Acts of the stoning of St. Stephen, mentions that a young man named Saul was in attendance. “Who is this Saul?” someone asked. “Paul,” another answered. “Really?” “Well, that’s the legend, the myth,” said the priest. The accompanist was very excited by the same passage because, he explained, he reads the Bible “very metaphorically,” and enjoys finding in it the occasional “snapshot” of the early Church that rates as historical according to the extra-biblical sources by which he defines factuality.

And so I’m back to square one.

I spent the rest of the daylight hours in my room, cleaning, writing, and editing video until Sean appeared in the early evening, wanting to go shopping. We’d pretty much exhausted the options available to us on foot–our corner of the city isn’t its liveliest–so we decided to use bicycles to expand our range. Bicycles are big here. Most major thoroughfares designate about a third of the width of their broad sidewalks as bicycle traffic lanes. (Pedestrians and cyclists alike mostly ignore the designations. And most people ride cheap Chinese bicycles that cost around a hundred bucks or less and so aren’t generally worth stealing and therefore don’t need to be locked up very carefully. (The most common variety of lock is simply a spring-loaded hoop bolted to the frame that can extend through the rear wheel to keep it from turning.)

In our dorm’s sheltered bicycle parking area are several old beaters that Szymon identified as common property; all we had to do if we wanted to use them was break their locks and fill their tires. (The keys had disappeared with the original owners.) By the time we’d liberated the bikes and gotten them more or less rideable, rain was falling with some conviction, so we set out like locals: one hand on the handlebars and the other holding up a 100-yen umbrella. Note: this is dangerous behavior on wet crowded sidewalks, especially if your brakes don’t quite stop your bike in a timely fashion, like ours didn’t.

We made it down to Shijō street without incident, locked our bikes, and joined the rushing stream of pedestrians on the bright and endless covered sidewalks of what is probably Kyoto’s premier shopping district. A turn away from the street led us into a dazzling two-story arcade of shops and eateries of every description, aimed mostly at youth with disposable income. When we came to the end of the arcade, passages opened on either side to parallel arcades just as long and crowded: a consumer labyrinth built into a city block.

Since coming back to Japan, I had been doubting my earlier memories of the women here, so many of whom had seemed so punishingly pretty two years ago. This time they had been appearing in a much less unfair hot-to-not ratio. I wondered if I had just been blinded before by the excitement of being in a new place.

Turns out I was just in the wrong part of Kyoto. Or the right part for studying a demanding traditional art with the minimum of distraction, anyhow. The girls down on Shijō are incandescent.

We didn’t have much time to blind ourselves staring at them, though, because already the shops were closing up. We found our way out of the maze and stopped into a local fast food chain restaurant called First Kitchen, which offers a choice of some 8 or so flavored salts on its french fries: I had a cheeseburger with pizza fries. The burger barely achieved mediocrity, but the fries made me want to come back to try the other flavors.

We got back to the dorm wet but uninjured, and spent the rest of the evening studying for the first of our Monday morning quizzes.

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.

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.

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.