Hlwatsch-sensei made an appearance to continue his survey of the history of Japan, addressing this time roughly the same era as last time, but from a different angle. Previously, we learned about the first importation, adoption, and rejection of Christianity; today we got the story of the consolidation of power in Japan under Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu.

After lunch: flower-induced panic. If I haven’t mentioned it before: I’m terrified of arranging the flowers for the tea room. I feel like everyone else is able to look at the flowers and see things I can’t. By now the fear is just feeding itself, of course: I go into the task with an attitude that ensures I won’t be able to perform it. This time the attitude was compounded by my having somehow gotten behind schedule. Anita had to step in to do the arrangement in one of our two practice rooms, and Tanja had to help me finish the one I’d started, while reminding me to breathe deep and try to relax.

Then on to shozumi disaster. I’d only had time and energy enough the night before to practice either charcoal or tea, and I’d chosen tea. That might have been a mistake. Having watched Nadja do shozumi the previous day, I blithely volunteered to give it a go this time around. As I’ve written before, I can watch a process very closely and still be completely unable to replicate it; I have to physically do a thing to learn it. So Hamana-sensei, his patience sorely tried, had to talk me point by point through the charcoal-laying procedure.

You may be curious about exactly what’s involved. Or not; I’ll describe it anyhow.

Before a tea function gets underway, the host places three burning lengths of charcoal called shitabi (“under-fire”) in the furo (or ro, depending on season), and then sets the kama atop it. After the guests are seated, the host brings in a basket containing a particular selection of charcoal pieces, metal chopsticks for handling the charcoal, metal rings for lifting the kama, a cluster of three large feathers bound together for dusting the furo and kama, and the incense box. He sets the basket down and makes another trip out of the room for a basin containing a pile of white ash that supports an ash spoon. Then, as methodically as he’ll make the tea, he produces from the front of his kimono a thick folded pad of white paper and sets it on the tatami; he lifts the kama off of the furo and sets it on the paper; he dusts the rim of the furo with the feathers; he adds charcoal and uses the ash spoon to cut a tiny divot out of the front of the furo’s ash (I haven’t learned the significance of this yet); he dusts again; he adds incense and dusts yet again; he replaces the kama and dusts it; and he takes the basket and basin away, leaving the incense box for the guest’s inspection.

Done well, this is all very impressive–especially after you’ve tried manipulating charcoal with big metal chopsticks yourself. Of course, I didn’t do it well at all on my first try. Not to worry: I won’t lack opportunities to refine my technique.

With the fire going (or on its way to going, we hoped) properly, we moved on to tea. Everything we’ve done up until now has been foundational; now we begin tackling a set of sixteen procedures called the konarai: “small learning.” The first is kinindate: a method for serving tea to a person of noble rank. Needless to say, opportunities to use it practically rarely come up, but Rikyū wanted his students to learn it early so that they’d be able to treat all guests as if they were nobility. Kinindate uses a tana, a tea bowl on an unlacquered wooden stand, and a special pedestal for serving sweets; the guest sits on the “highest” tatami–usually reserved in our practices for teachers’ use; and a hantō (helper) shuttles the tea bowl and dōgu for haiken between the host and guest.

Since I’d started the afternoon by doing sumidemae, I didn’t get to try kinindate until everyone else had done it, by which point my legs were no longer playing nice. Happily, since the temae isn’t so different from the tana usucha we’d done previously, I didn’t make too abhorrent a mess of my first attempt.

The weather was cool and cloudy but without any threat of rain, so Noh was back on the schedule. I cleaned tatami in a hurry and bolted my supper, then changed clothes and hopped a train to Heian Shrine with Anita and Almerindo. We approached the enormous complex from the south, walking beneath the immense red torī straddling the street, and walked through the gate into a sizable crowd. The large gravel courtyard had been given over to the two days of performances: chairs on risers at the back, chairs on the ground to the sides, low platforms covered with blue felt in the middle–closer to the action, but less comfortable, so more available. At the north end, an open Noh stage, the top of its framework fluttering with folded strips of Shinto-paper. On the ground surrounding the stage, wood fires burned in iron baskets on stands, constantly tended by priests.

We arrived late, just as the evening’s second play was concluding. There was a shuffling of spectators and we were able to find ourselves some space on one of the blue platforms; we left our shoes on the ground and hunkered on down. A kyōgen comedy began. Like all the presentations on this year’s program (The 59th annual “Takigi Noh” function), it was a tribute to The Tale of Genji; some of the plays were traditional Noh-repertoire adaptations of episodes from the novel, but this was an original piece. Two Heian playboys competing for one woman, who turns out to be an ancient crone. Funny despite my not understanding the dialogue.

The sky darkened by and by, leaving the performers in the light of electric bulbs and the constantly-stoked fire baskets. We ate chocolate and senbei as the final play of the evening began. Genji’s lover (Wife? Do I care?) lies gravely ill; a shaman and a priest are called in to heal her. The source of her affliction turns out to be one of Genji’s former lovers, so jealous that her living spirit has possessed and sickened the New Woman. In the end, the spirit appears in frightening demonic guise and does battle with the old priest, whose only apparent weapon is a string of prayer beads that he rubs vigorously, desperately between his palms. Contrary to my expectations, this seems to do the trick in the end.

Since this was Noh, of course, all of the above took an incredibly long time while performers declaimed in funny voices and moved very slowly. I can’t claim to have enjoyed it, exactly, but I was glad to have gone. Pretty costumes, an ancient art form worth seeing at least once just to say you have, and a perfect setting: the cool night, the primal roaring fires, the buildings of the shrine otherworldly at the edge of the dancing light.

And then once again back to the century in progress, onto a train and up an elevator and into bed.

Okusama arrived at 9:30 and spent an hour sharing little opinions and pieces of advice with us, and asking how we were enjoying our time in Midorikai so far. It was a difficult interview in that we were all so afraid of offending that we barely breathed; Sean later guessed–rightly, I think–that Okusama probably would like a more relaxed and open chat session–but I don’t know if that can happen when you meet someone you’ve just watered pavement and lint-rolled stairs for.

The afternoon’s activity was a practice chaji hosted by Tanja, so before lunch we changed into our work clothes and cleaned the tatami and garden at the Chadō Kaikan facility next to the school. We picked dead bamboo leaves out of the carefully raked rock garden and watered the roji, the garden path leading from waiting area to tea room. Then we changed back into formal wear, ate “chicken-cheese-yaki” at the shokudō, and met Hamana-sensei at the gate to Chadō Kaikan.

The cool of the morning had given way to proper early summer weather: clear skies, light haze on the mountains, an insistent sun, and a light breeze. The path to the front door had been freshly watered, but the door was closed; our host wasn’t quite ready for us. When we did enter, we left our shoes in the cabinet by the door, proceeded across the genkan’s blue carpet into the yoritsuki, and changed into our white socks while Hamana-sensei put on his hakama. Then we filed into the machiai, admired the scroll hanging in the tokonoma, and sat on the blue felt carpet in the middle of the room. The tabakobon sat in front of Nadia, who was designated first guest (shōkyaku) for today’s chaji. The wooden bon in two tones with handle and ichō leaf cut-out, a favorite of Daisōshō’s, held a squat little hiire (Oribe?)with thick green glaze droplets, and a haifuki, a cylinder of fresh green bamboo with a tiny bit of water in the bottom, originally used to extinguish tobacco. The tiny coal in the hiire burned happily on its carefully shaped and scored bed of ash. Verena, the hantō (assistant to the host), brought in cups of osayu. The water had been brought by Szymon this morning from a temple near the old Imperial palace, and was clean and tasty.

Then we moved to the koshikake, where Nadia distributed a stack of straw cushions, enza, onto the waiting stools after moving another tabakobon to the stool between where first and second (me) guests would sit. The second bon’s hiire was a more formal piece of work than the first, white porcelain with a delicate pattern of red, blue, and gold painted on the glaze.

Through the open door to the roji outside, we saw our host Tanja emerge from the tea room to pour a bucket of fresh water into the tsukubai. After she’d taken the bucket away, she returned to greet us and invite us to follow her to the tea room. One by one, we slipped on zori and made our way to the tsukubai, where we rinsed left hand, right hand, mouth. My giant American feet, without even the benefit of split-toed tabi, didn’t fit into the tiny straw rubber-soled zori; I ended up wearing them sideways and wobbling through the roji to the tea room.

Entering, we admired the scroll in the tokonoma and the wet sukigigama: a flanged kettle that rests on the ro’s interior frame instead of a gotoku. We took our places and, when our host had entered, one by one slid forward with our sensū to thank her for inviting us to the chaji. The shōkyaku asked polite questions about the dōgu we’d seen thus far, and Tanja began the sumidemae, the procedure for laying charcoal, bringing out the sumitori (charcoal basket), lifting the kama out of the hearth, and arranging large pieces of black charcoal and edazumi–whitewashed twig charcoal–around the three already-burning shitabi. Finally she added incense, and allowed us to examine the cute little incense box she’d chosen: a tiny piece of ceramic in the shape of a stack of books.

Next Tanja brought out her omogashi, the main sweet of the function, in a stack of black lacquer boxes (fuchidaka) topped with fragrant new wooden kuromoji, picks used for eating soft sweets. Tanja had herself made the delicious omogashi: uncolored Koosh Ball-like mochi pom-poms with pale red bean filling.

After we’d eaten, we returned through the roji, freshly watered once again by the hantō, to the koshikake for a break called the nakadachi. A gong summoned us back to the tea room (by way, once again, of ablutions at the tsukubai) where we sat for koicha. The scroll had been replaced with a tsubaki bud in a Shigaraki hanaire of a squashed shape called “traveller’s pillow.” Nadia asked more questions, Tanja whisked up thick, dark green tea paste in a black raku bowl, and each guest took a small sip, wiping the rim clean before passing the bowl down the line.

Because this chaji was of the abbreviated kind called hango, where the kaiseki meal is omitted, the second laying of the charcoal was unnecessary. “As the water is boiling so nicely, please allow me to make usucha,” our host said. A tabakobon was brought in to signify that the event had moved into its final and least formal phase, and higashi, the dry sweets, materialized. Tanja had not made these but had procured them especially for the occasion. There were little bows (or butterflies) of glossy purple sugar, chewy when bitten into, and square pressed sweets embossed with a symbol from the Tale of Genji.

Tanja made two bowls of thin tea for each of us, relaxing and becoming more confident as she performed the more familiar temae and the conversation grew friendly and casual. Of the several chawan she had chosen to use for the occasion, my favorite was a copy of a design by Tantansai, the 14th-generation Urasenke Grand Master: a rather playful bowl of cream-colored ceramic, smooth and regular, glazed inside and out with seven red bands edged in gold, not entirely unlike a candy cane.

When we’d drunk our fill, we thanked our host once more before admiring the flower and kama one last time and scooting out the door. We lined up in the garden, which had been watered yet again by Verena, for a thank-you-and-goodbye bow, and then we took our leave.

After comments on the proceedings by Hamana-sensei and Gary-sensei, who helped Tanja pull it off, we all chipped in to clean up. Sean and I left early to take care of the 3rd-floor tatami at school, and got to the shokudō just before closing to eat a little omelet-thing and a little sausage patty-thing with assorted trimmings.

And still my work wasn’t done. It had fallen to Anita and I to buy snacks for the next day’s charcoal-cutting practicum, so the two of us walked up to the giant Vivre department store and stocked up on fruit and cookies and little tubs of jello and senbei.

Back at the dorm, I raced up to the roof to get a photograph of the yellow moon hanging over the city. Then I wrote a thank-you note to Tanja for the chaji, finished my account of Friday’s kencha-shiki both for this journal and for Hamana-sensei, who asked us to write a report on the event, and had a beer before bed.

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.