We started the day, as we did last time, by dusting, sweeping, and wiping down the rooms we’d use at the Chadō Kaikan building across the street from Konnichian. Ordinarily, of course, guests don’t do any of the grunt work for a chaji, but Midorikai ain’t ordinary, and having to help out instills a great appreciation for the amount of effort required to pull off an event like this. Besides, it’s pleasant work, especially with many hands. Once the inside spaces were spick-and-span, we moved outside to sweep the garden paths, scrub out the tsukubai–we’d be putting water from it into our mouths later, after all–and pick up thousands of fallen bamboo leaves. This last is a Sisyphean task if there ever was one; every time a breeze stirs, dozens more leaves flutter mockingly down to the ground. And today we had plenty of breeze, on account of a typhoon that apparently passed last night just close enough to give us a wet morning followed by a dry but brisk and blustery day.

Then we strapped ourselves into kimono and (for the men-folk) hakama: I wore my brand-new tailor-made gift-from-Oiemoto kimono and nagajuban, and boy are they ever things of beauty. Polyester like my off-the-shelf ones, as far as I know, but the similarity ends there. Much better fabric, for one: soft and heavy, they drape naturally and comfortably. Then, of course, there’s the fact that they were actually sewn to my measurements. Clothes that fit: a novel concept! I’m reluctant to get back into the cheap stuff tomorrow, but I really do have to keep the nice garments nice by saving them for special occasions.

We ate lunch very carefully to avoid food-splatters, and then met Gary-sensei, who would coach us guests through our roles in the chaji. We entered Chadō Kaikan, took off our tabi covers, and made our way into the machiai, or waiting room. Blue felt mosen carpets covered the middle of the room; the tabakobon sat in the corner where I was expected to sit as shōkyaku. It had tall sides with oval-shaped cut-outs, and no handle; the hiire sitting on it was porcelain decorated with pictures from a famous old Chinese scroll on which a bunch of animals cavort and (if I recall correctly) take a somewhat irreverent attitude toward Buddhist symbolism. The kakemono said something about the swallow flying straight despite sideways-blowing winds; I couldn’t read any of it but I liked the little ink painting of the swallow itself at the top. Anita had also decorated the wakidoko shelf next to the tokonoma with a pair of decorative balls that I think she later said were in the image of traditional children’s playthings, sitting on some gorgeous squares of fabric.

Szymon, hantō for the event, brought in osayu in little porcelain kumidashiwan with blue vertical stripes, using a tray of the style called koma because it’s decorated with the concentric red and green and yellow circles of a spinning top seen from the…er…top. I neglected to ask our host later about the water’s source, but I’d run into Szymon in the morning when he was carrying it in a giant plastic tub, so I knew he’d gotten it very early from a nearby temple known for its water–with good reason, too; it’s quite tasty. Apparently, though, the priests or monks or whatever don’t look kindly on people who bring containers bigger than a liter or two to fill, so obtaining enough water for a chaji requires some real persistence on top of the baseline bother of having to go out early in the morning and then having to lug back a heavy tub.

We moved then to the koshikakemachiai and sat on straw cushions atop wobbly wooden stools; the second tabakobon had cut-outs in the sides inspired by an old Chinese coin, one of the seven (?) traditional Japanese treasures (takara, a recurring iconographic theme). It was made, Gary-sensei said, probably of mulberry wood, and had a dark bamboo handle. Switched if I can remember anything about the hiire, though.

Host appeared; everyone bowed. Host poured fresh water into tsukubai and disappeared again. One by one we slipped on the straw rojizori sandals (much less awkward for me than last time, since I’m in tabi now, but they’re still only about half the size of my feet) and purified our hands and mouths on our way into the tearoom itself.

The scroll made another reference to wind, saying something about the rustling leaves creating it, which apparently was a point of contention in 10th or 11th-century Chinese philosophy, according to Gary-sensei (is there anything he doesn’t know?): does the blowing wind cause the leaves to shake or do the shaking leaves cause the wind to blow? The kama had a peculiar reddish color and little vertical nubbins around its mouth. The tana looked, as Almerindo astutely observed, a lot like a very old-fashioned radio with fabric speaker grilles. Atop it sat the incense box, a little carved-wood thing in a whimsical, unwieldy, and unidentifiable shape that we found out later was some funny hat of yore. Next to that sat…what? Something. The big feather cluster for the charcoal-laying, perhaps. I don’t recall.

This is about when I stopped having a good day.

Everyone reading this (well, everyone I know of who’s reading this) knows already that I tend to have expectations of myself that we might generously call unrealistic. That served me especially poorly today, when I had to deliver memorized (sort of) lines, make conversation with the host, and perform other little tasks I’d never performed before. I was too busy failing to do any of those things very elegantly to remember half as much as I would have liked about the dōgu (like their names), let alone to enjoy a damned thing about the afternoon.

My senpai did wonderfully, at least. She started by answering my fumbled questions about stuff in the machiai and the scroll in the present room, then moved on to lay the charcoal (her charcoal carrier, a woven Chinese-style basket) while Gary-sensei pointed out that it might have been nice for me to observe, when Anita explained the wind-themed scrolls, that they were perfect for today’s breezy weather. And while an emotionally healthy person would have said “aha!” and filed that away as useful information and a good example, I took it as a savage attack on my competence, from which I never did recover. Didn’t even want to open my mouth after that; had to be prompted to ask Anita about all the other dōgu; couldn’t do that with any style, either.

You’re quite right: it was my second-ever chaji and my first as shōkyaku. Of course I couldn’t really be expected to do other than I did.

Unfortunately, that’s not how I’m wired. Can’t even think of any credible way to implicate my parents in this. And it doesn’t help that, as bad as I am at taking any criticism, Gary-sensei’s style of guidance in particular seems to press an emotional hot button in me, though I like and respect the guy immensely and know he only means well.

Anyhow, we took a look at the incense box, and then Anita served terrific okashi inspired by the earliest Japanese sweets we know about (from the Tale of Genji, I think): sticky mochi globs between two leaves of…um…plants. Then we took a break. Then we came back to find that the scroll had disappeared and a flower had been placed in the toko: a single tall pale blossom called shakuhaku or shakuhyaku or something; it’s not in my dictionary under any spelling I’ve thought to try. The vase might have been metal. It definitely had, like, angles and curves, but no pattern on the surface. On the tana now sat the chaire, the tea container for making thick tea, about which I remember nothing in particular despite having held and inspected it myself later, in its fabric cover (shifuku), about which: ditto. Next to it: possibly something else, or not.

Thick tea in a black raku bowl and a not-black not-raku bowl. A chashaku that, considering the occasion, might actually have been, as Anita said, carved by Daisōshō and named Ichie, “one meeting.” (In practice we attach famous makers and poetic names to our dōgu just for…er…practice.) A metal kensui that looked like a gourd but that was actually in the shape of a scabbard for an arrowhead. A futaoki that had once been some sort of horse accessory: A hollow brass donut with a ball bearing that rolled around inside sounding like Christmas. More awkward questions, awkward silences, advice taken poorly. A sip of koicha too small, a correction from Gary-sensei, a scowl and a bowl-rim wiping cloth stuffed frustratedly back into my kimono.

More sweets: blue-and-white sugar ribbons bent to evoke running water; sticky sweet red stuff sandwiched between senbei like super-classy Oreos. Thin tea served in bowls I can’t recall. Inspection of the dōgu. Fumbling, fatigue, and frustration. Bow, bow, thank you thank you, that’s a wrap.

Clean, change, eat, clean. Write thank-you letters to Anita for the chaji and to Oiemoto for the kimono. Seek emotional catharsis through public blogging about personal shortcomings.

One last thing. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t still be so hung up on the day’s disappointments except that I was confronted in the evening by a well-meaning classmate who said that he knew I was working on managing my emotions better, but that my frustration in the tearoom is very obvious and makes everyone else in the room uncomfortable. No easy way to bring it up, he said, so he’d just be blunt about it. Which I appreciate, but of course now I feel infinitely worse because it’s not just me and my damage; it’s me and my damage impacting everyone else. Worst of all, it’s impacting people in precisely the way we want to avoid in tea, which prioritizes tranquility and mutual awareness and consideration between host and guest.

Tea isn’t easy. That’s the point, the challenge, the opportunity. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.

Tomorrow blah blah new day blah blah blah.

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.