ENTRY 6: Tea Ceremonies, Calligraphy and Tokyo Skytree
こんばんわみなあさん - konbanwa minaasan - good evening everyone. Hope you're all having an excellent day! Today started out with a great surprise, I slept amazingly and actually woke up with my alarm! So hopefully that means my jetlag has left me behind for the most part.
This morning's special class was about the ritual of a Japanese Tea Ceremony, ちゃのゆ - chanoyu, which can also be called chadō or sadō. The emphasis was strongly on every part being purposeful and the Buddhist idea of mu, nothingness, with how participants leave behind all their preconceived notions going into the ceremony. Nature was also strongly emphasized since each tea ceremony takes care to make sure the theme suits the season and the ingredients used to make the sweets that go along with the tea are the freshest of the fresh. It's a true way to experience the moment between the host and the guest and even participating in a miniature performance of one during the class made me feel how much love is put into every motion the host makes. Typically Tea Ceremonies last around 4 hours, my legs ached from being on my knees after only 20 minutes of kneeling on tatami so I respect the strength of the people who are well practiced at this art. During the class I felt a lot of connections to the Asia's America/America's Asia class I took last semester so I had a ton of notes to take down concerning that.
Unfortunately I don't have any photos of that so すみません - sumimasen - sorry (the most important word for a foreigner to know).
My friends and I set out for a sit down lunch since we'd had a lot of conbini food since were here. Due to allergen restrictions we landed on Mosburger, a Japanese exclusive chain that our Hollins Japanese professor Naito-Sensei recommended.
It was めちゃおいし - mecha oishi - very delicious, they had this interesting warm tomato sauce on there that was almost like chili but I think it was more tomato and okra. It seriously was good, better than McDonalds, and only for about 2 bucks as usual.
Following that was a しょどう - shodou - calligraphy workshop we got to take a part in. It paired very well with the intentionality behind the tea ceremony we'd learned about that morning. We started off practicing simple kanji to perfect our strokes. To do this we did simple 三と川 - san to kawa - 3 and river.
This was my first try at it, the best help was watching how the teacher let her brush push into the page at an angle at the start of each line. In all honesty she asked me if this was my first time because she thought my 三 was really beautiful. It was a really amazing compliment to receive but the second we moved into more complicated things I was just as blown away by the complexity as everyone else.
We were allowed the rest of the class to practice one kanji of my choosing. I chose 旅 - tabi - journey. It just seemed suitable to me. The more I wrote it, and the more different ways I experienced the word with the different techniques I applied to draw it. From holding my brush in a tight fist to invoke a sense of strength and severeness to holding the brush with barely the tips of my fingers for a delicate sense. I practiced for about an hour and I still wasn't happy with how my kanji looked, but I still finished off the workshop drawing the kanji on a special paper in a frame where it wouldn't crumble as easily. And the longer I look at my final kanji, the happier I feel I am with it. The joy of journeying with someone else.
Kanji are often pictograms and what I see within 'journey' is 2 people holding hands. Later in my practice it became very important to me that the 7th stroke line touched the first part of the kanji because if they didn't touch it simply didn't feel whole. There were lots of imperfections in my final product, at least in my eyes. But I feel that's how you find the art in it. Perfect lines don't carry emotion like calligraphy does and this class did a lot to open me up to this fact.
We had a little break after this where I got a coffee at a cafe, practicing my Japanese conversation skills I'd learned that morning. エムアイスコーヒーください - Emu Aisu Cohi kudasai - a medium iced coffee please. That wasn't exactly what I said but close enough.
This was the first night we didn't have free and the Tokyo Sky Tree awaited. It'd been in sight since we got here and now we were finally going. Word to the wise, don't go in there and expect to keep on track. Because below the tourist attraction that is the Sky Tree, there is a 6 floor mall. And not a skinny 6 floors either, they seriously had everything from a Shonen Jump Shop to a bookstore to a shop specializing in melon goods. It's a total blast and I couldn't stop buying gifts and various things to sate my little materialist heart. I may need to go back even still just for the mall.
But the sky tree itself was fantastic, I've been in a lot of tall building tourist attractions in my life and I've never seen a city spread into the distance on all sides like this. It was a cloudy day but impressive nonetheless.
We were there right as the sun was going down so it was really fun to see the lights turn on.
I got a little bit lost on my way back to the station considering everything was directly under the sky tree and it was hard enough finding the way down the floors as it was without needing to find the secret tunnel under the building. But I made it back safely so everything was great.
じああねあしたに - jaa ne ashita-ni - see you tomorrow!
Next Entry : Mount Takao and Other Tales
