#machiai

[pachy-veria]

腰掛待合

[pix4japan]

This classical “machiai” is a sheltered bench waiting area to relax until you are called into the garden tea house for the tea ceremony. The machiai features a woven bamboo roof design and the classical use of plaster comprised of natural earth sand (sunakabe = literally “sand wall”). ISO 100 at ƒ/4.5 for 1/20 sec. #machiai #Japanesegarden #traditionalgarden #courtyardGarden #tsuboniwa #KorekiyoTakahashiHouse #koganeipark #坪庭 #高橋是清邸 #江戸東京たてもの園 #小金井公園

[shamardj]

San Diego Fountain Inspiration for a mid-sized asian partial sun backyard stone landscaping in fall. #tea garden, #landscape, #california, #?, #machiai, #?, #??

[studyelephant]

San Diego Fountain Inspiration for a mid-sized asian partial sun backyard stone landscaping in fall.

[portlandjapanesegarden]

The Way of Tea: The Tea House

This month, the Portland Japanese Garden will again offer free public demonstration of Chado: the Way of Tea – every third Saturday (June 18th) in the Tea Garden at 1pm and 2pm.

“You have been invited to tea. The city is Kyoto. The season, early spring. Together with three other guests, you wait around the corner from the entrance to the garden in order to make certain you arrive at the gate just on time. Not early, not late. Just on time. You and the other guests wear pattern less kimono, though more and more these days people wear Western clothes to tea: suits and ties, simple dresses…. no one wears jewelry or uses perfume or cologne, those being too worldly and distracting…”

You walk in single file to the gate, the oldest and most proficient at tea among you going first. You are second in line but that does not make you second in rank at the gathering. That place is reserved for the person who is last in line because, even as there are responsibilities with going first, so too are there duties assigned to the person who goes last in line.

You walk most of the way down the path but, before you reach the entry to the house, you find, off to the left, a small roofed gate, this one not grand and imposing like the one on the street, not solid and defensive, but lightly built, open and airy. If your invitation today had been to a formal, full-session tea gathering, a chaji, you would have to proceeded to the main house and gone inside to wait in a room set aside for that purpose, the machiai, where the host or her assistant would have served you cups of hot water made with the same water that she would use to make tea later on.”

These words from the book The Japanese Tea Garden, Marc Peter Keane talks about tradition surrounding an invitation to the tea house.