A Great Day for a Great Cause

Yesterday our tea group held a benefit for the earthquake victims of Sendai, Japan. Even though it’s been several months since the tsunami hit that region, the cleanup continues, and the people are still struggling to put their lives back in order. More than 23,000 people died as a result of the earthquakes and the tsunami, and countless more were affected. It’s hard to comprehend the scope of the tragedy, and even though our efforts were pretty small in comparison to what needs to be done, we were happy to be able to do something – particularly for the people of Sendai, who have been so generous to us in the past.

We did six sittings total – three for thin tea (usucha) in the 15-mat room that looks out over the garden, and three more thick tea (koicha) in the actual tearoom, which is 4 ½ mats including the alcove (tokonoma). In my mind, I’m seeing some of the people from the large Urasenke branches who do tea for hundreds of people in a single day saying, “Ha! That’s nothing!” But for us, it was a big day.

The credit for putting everything together goes to Taeko Shervin sensei, who came up with this idea back in March and has spent the past couple of months putting everything together, including making all of the sweets herself (a hundred each of two different kinds of dry sweets for thin tea and 50 moist sweets for koicha; her friend Wada-san also made dry sweets for us). But the staff at the Japanese House, where the benefit was held, also deserve a lot of thanks for all their hard work in making it happen. They really helped to promote it, and of course did a lot of work getting the house ready and managing all the visitors.

People were so generous, it really blew us away. There was one man from a tattoo shop in Philadelphia who raised $2,300 for tsunami victims, but wasn’t sure what to do with it; when he heard about this event he decided to give the money to this fund. There was also a little girl who, on her birthday, asked people to donate for the tsunami victims rather than getting presents; she brought her money to the event too.

At the end of the day, there were about 250 people who came through the house (though not all of them had tea; there was an artist named Aaron Mannino who did an art installation on the house grounds, and there were a number of visitors who came specifically to see that), and the event raised about $7,000, including donations that came in from people who couldn’t make it on that day.

To everyone who helped and everyone who came, thank you so much!

Tea Ceremony Benefit for Japan

Apologies for the late notice, but please spread the word to anyone that you think might be interested:

The people of Sendai have had a close relationship with the Japanese community of Philadelphia for many years. Sendai is known as Mori no Mikyo, the City of Trees, because of the large number of trees within its city limits -- something it shares with Philadelphia, which has more parks within its city borders than any city in the United States.

Volunteer groups from Sendai have helped to raise money to repair and maintain the roof at Shofuso, the Japanese House and Gardens in Fairmount Park, and many times have come to Philadelphia to help celebrate Tanabata, the Milky Way festival in July.

In honor of this relationship, and to express our deep sympathy for their suffering following the earthquakes and tsunami in Japan, the Chado Association of Philadelphia is hosting a benefit tea ceremony, with proceeds going directly to the people of Sendai.

Date: Sunday, June 19th (Father's Day)
Time: Seatings for usucha (thin tea) at 12:00, 1:30, and 3:00 p.m.
Seatings for koicha (thick tea) at 11:30, 1:30, and 3:00 p.m.
Location: Shofuso, the Japanese House and Gardens in Fairmount Park
Horticultural and Lansdowne Drives, Philadelphia, PA
Fee: $25 for Shofuso members; $30 for non-members. Additional donations are gratefully accepted.

Reservations are recommended. To register, visit www.shofuso.com or call 215-878-5097

The Fallen Blossom

I recently read a tea story from the early seventeenth century in Japan. There was a priest at the Daitokuji temple in Kyoto who happened to see a particularly beautiful camellia blossom in the garden, and he decided to send it to his friend, the tea master Sen Sotan. He carefully picked the flower and gave it to one of his disciples, with strict instructions to handle the gift carefully on his way to Sotan’s residence. Despite the messenger’s best efforts, however, the blossom fell off of the stem before he could give it to Sotan.

The messenger wondered what to do, and finally decided to take the flower and its stem to Sotan and offer his abject apologies. Sotan accepted both the apologies and the gift. Instead of throwing the flower away, he placed the stem in a hanging vase on the pillar of the tokonoma (the alcove where the scroll is usually hung and a vase of flowers is arranged), and he placed the blossom beneath the vase as if it had fallen there naturally.

As I read this story, it reminded me of a time when I was in my teacher’s tearoom during a lesson, and I noticed that the head had fallen off one of the flowers in the tokonoma; it was lying there, under the vase. There was something really profound about the visual impact of that. I was still thinking about it after I went home, and I even wrote a little poem about it. But it’s really hard to put that feeling into words.

I think that it says something about the transitory nature of life – it’s not a bud, with all the potential of life; it’s not a flower in full gorgeous bloom. It’s come to the end of its existence; no longer an object of admiration, but something that most people would toss into the trash. The moment when the blossom falls is a moment of transition, and I think Sotan was trying to convey, with his action, that that moment is when we should be paying the most attention. There’s beauty in all moments, in all phases of existence, in endings as well as beginnings. If tea is about noticing things and feeling things, then surely the moment when the flower falls is a crucial moment to capture.

Sakura Time!

The past couple of weeks we’ve been caught up in cherry blossom (sakura) time. The weekend of April 9^th we had our usual demonstration at Shofuso, the Japanese House, and then the following day was Sakura Sunday, the big celebration in Fairmount Park. The timing was absolutely perfect – the blossoms were just coming into bloom. Here’s a view from one of the main plantings of cherry trees:

We didn’t have a formal demonstration that day, but one of our students, Mary Lynn, set up under one of the cherry trees and did chabako, a picnic-style tea, for anyone who happened to stop by and want some tea. …

The following week, we had another tea gathering, this time for members of the Chado Association. This was something new for us – even though chabako is especially designed to be done outdoors, we rarely plan outdoor gatherings for logistical reasons. Even for a simple tea, when you’re serving a dozen people there’s a fair amount of stuff to carry out to the site, and of course you have to plan for rain or other contingencies. I’m very happy to say that the weather was mostly good. “Mostly” in that it was sunny and reasonably warm, but it was also very windy, which made it a little on the chilly side and caused some complications in making the tea.

There were little things – for example, the tea whisk kept blowing over – and then there were the messy things: every time I opened the lid of the tea container, a gust of wind came up and blew a cloud of powdered tea all over the place. The tray with the tea items was a mess!

However, the really important thing in any tea gathering is that the guests have fun and enjoy each other’s company, and on that score I think it was a success – everybody seemed to have a good time, and we got to see some old friends we hadn’t talked to in a while.

Here’s a picture of us under the cherry trees:

(This, by the way, is the same place Sakura Sunday is held.)

Even though we look like we’re all alone in the photo above, there were actually a fair number of people in the park, and as I walked around before and after I got a lot of questions about what we were doing. That’s another fun thing about doing an outdoor gathering – we get to talk to people about tea ceremony, and maybe share some things with them that they didn’t know before. All in all, it was a good day.

Our Fame Spreads...

Last August, a film crew from a site called Tokyo Pop came to Shofuso to do some filming for a show they were doing called America’s Greatest Otaku. I had never heard of the site before, but I was assured that this was just because I’m very old. They were in Philadelphia looking for Japanese-themed places and events, and their search led them to Shofuso. They did some filming and interviews with the site manager at the time, with a local taiko drumming group called Kyo Daiko, and with us, your faithful tea people.

The filming was fun – they had two young people in the tearoom with us; I made the tea, and one of our students, Mary Lynn, acted as first guest and coached them on how to drink. (She did a great job and actually did quite a bit of talking, although they ended up not using much of her in the final cut.) After the temae was finished, they did a short interview with me about tea ceremony in general.

I thought that the whole thing turned out very nicely, including the tour of Shofuso and the bit on the taiko group. I always cringe when I see myself on film, but they managed to make even me look good. If you’d like to see for yourself, it’s just been posted online:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/226832/americas-greatest-otaku-down-home-otaku

The Philadelphia portion starts at around 3 minutes and 15 sections into the clip.

Enjoy!

First Lessons of the Season

We got an unexpected warm spell (relatively speaking) for our first lessons in March, so we had lessons in the fifteen-mat room. It was a good thing that we did, because we had a full house – in addition to our regulars, we had an old friend returning for lessons after some time away for health reasons, and a new (to us) student continuing her tea studies after starting with a different teacher. In the morning, we had two people starting to learn tea for the first time, which is always exciting to watch. Definitely an auspicious start to the season!

Here’s a couple of photos to give you the feeling:

This is the steam coming off the kama (hot water kettle) as it boils water for tea…



And this is the garden in Shofuso as seen from the veranda…

Haru Ichiban

After a cold, cold winter, a week or so ago we had our first real thaw of the season with a warm wind from the south. A Japanese chajin (tea person) I was with called it “haru ichiban,” “the first of spring.” That’s the feeling that’s in the air right now -- the early flowers are just getting ready to bloom, we’re in the middle of plans for cherry blossom season, and we’re getting ready to go back to have lessons at Shofuso again.

Shofuso is a traditional Japanese house, which means, among other things, that it has no heat or indoor plumbing. The indoor plumbing is easy enough to deal with – we just carry buckets of water to the “mizuya” (literally “water room,” it’s the preparation area of a tea room, most often translated “kitchen”). But during the winter the heat is a challenge, because for safety reasons we aren’t allowed to use the traditional solution, which would be to build a fire in the fire-pit of the tearoom. There are electrical outlets around the house, so we can run extension cords into the room to power space heaters, but the space heaters are not match for truly freezing weather. So in January and February we have a long winter break, and come back to Shofuso in March.

There’s a real sense of renewal there, throwing open the doors and airing out the rooms and getting ready for our busy summer season. In early March it’ll probably still be too cold to sit and look at the garden outside while we do tea, but there’ll still be time to appreciate the warmth of our tea and the feeling of the bowls in our hands. No matter how many times I start this process, it never gets old, and I’m never less grateful for the opportunity to stop and really feel it.