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.

Classes today were held in the practice facility on the second floor of the women’s dorm, which contains one very large room (dozens of mats; the largest standard tea room has eight) and a 4.5-mat room in one elevated corner, open on two sides to the rest of the hall. Our morning lecture was on Noh theater: an elderly American expatriate who performs with a Noh school here in Kyoto walked us through some of the basic postures and movements, which of course are very stylized, awkward, and difficult, and nothing at all like the way we carry ourselves in the tea room.

After a fish lunch, we continued our bonryaku practice, today with Imagawa-sensei, who patiently attempted to get me to sit up straight while keeping my arms and shoulders relaxed. At least I was more confident with the basic order of the procedure than I was yesterday, and for some mysterious reason, my knees held up comparatively well all afternoon. We had beautiful sweets called sakuramochi: soft and sticky pebbled balls of translucent pink mochi wrapped in fragrant green leaves. The slender hanging bamboo flower vase held a little red tsubaki bud and an elegant twig of yukiyanagi studded with tiny white blossoms. All in all, it was a lovely afternoon–our most enjoyable and encouraging practice so far–and I bounced up to do my chores in a mood as merry as yesterday’s was morose.

Supper featured a breaded fried egg. Later, Sean and Szymon and I sat down together to have a beer and study a bit. Unfortunately, before we got to the studying part of our plan, Almerindo knocked on the door with beer of his own, the conversation ran wild, and Szymon ended up producing a dangerous succession of liquors from his personal stash. Innocent little tastes in sufficient quantity lost their innocence, and we all stumbled off to bed in conditions most unsuitable for a school night.

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.