Visit to a New Chashitsu

This weekend several members of our tea group were privileged to be invited to the opening of a new tearoom in Washington, D.C. The tearoom is located in an office building in the downtown area, a few blocks away from the White House. From the outside it looks like any other office, but once you go down a long hallway and into the tea space, you’re greeted by an open area where they can (and did, while we were there) have a ryuurei tana set up. (Ryuurei is a type of temae where tea is done sitting at a low table, with the host and guests sitting on stools. Because of the weight of the table and chairs and the potential for damage to a tatami mat, this is usually done in a room without tatami flooring.)

In a traditional tearoom, the guests will travel from the waiting area through a roji, a path leading through a garden, and then into the tearoom itself. In this particular arrangement, we stepped outside onto a deck overlooking the city, where a roji-style space had been set up (with the path but no living plants). We walked down the path and then entered the tea space from the outside, coming in and viewing the alcove with the scroll and the kettle and other utensils that had been set out.

The tearoom is set up in two parts; a main eight-mat room with the tokonoma (alcove) and the hearth at one end, and a six-mat room at the other. Removable doors either separate the two rooms or are removed to create one, as they were for the opening tea.

Urasenke provided the resources to build the room, and as a further show of support the head of the school (Oiemoto) sent his wife, daughter, and nephew to celebrate the opening – he himself was unable to come because it’s Rikyuki, the time when tea people remember the passing of the founder of our school (his ancestor, going back sixteen generations) and he’s not allowed to leave Japan at this time. (Someone said that he’s prevented from leaving the country by law, but I’m not certain about that.)

During the opening, we were honored to have Oiemoto’s daughter prepare tea for us, while her mother sat in the room and acted as assistant, and explanations were provided by a gyotei (high-level sensei) from Kyoto who also flew in for the event. In addition to everything else, Oiemoto personally wrote the calligraphy for a scroll that was given as a gift to the Washington tea association.

After being served tea and sweets, we were given a chance to take a closer look at the details of the room. One very nice touch was that on the crossbeam dividing the room, there are five types of wood. One type of wood was used to inlay cherry blossoms into the wood, so that anyone who visits the room will remember that the room was completed at cherry blossom time.

Speaking of, I also got a chance to visit the Tidal Basin area, where the Washington D.C. cherry blossoms are planted. They were just past full bloom when we got there – starting to shed their petals, but still very beautiful. Here are some photos:

I’m not sure what type of cherry trees these are, but they’re a bit different from the type we have planted in Philadelphia. Take a look. This first photo is from Washington:

And this is from a previous year’s bloom in Philadelphia:

All in all, it was a wonderful weekend, and we were all thrilled to be invited to this opening and very jealous of the Washington group’s beautiful new tearoom! Hopefully they’ll be able to use it in prosperity for many years to come.

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.

Sakura Season!

This past weekend was Philadelphia’s Sakura Matsuri, the cherry blossom festival, so of course it was a busy weekend for us. On Saturday, Drew Hanson, one of our teachers, did a demonstration at the Morris Arboretum that was covered by the local news (he ended up on television!), and was attended by 60-70 people. I was helping one of our other teachers, Taeko Shervin, doing two smaller demonstrations at the Japanese House. I don’t have any photos of Drew’s demo yet, but here are some from Taeko-sensei’s:

The demonstrations took place on the veranda of the house, overlooking the koi pond. Here’s a shot that gives you a sense of where everybody was:



And us serving sweets:



And if you’re wondering what they saw as they were sitting there, here’s a photo of Taeko-sensei doing tea (I’m standing behind her). She was doing a type of tea ceremony called shikishidate, a type of tea ceremony intended to be done outside picnic-style.



And, just for the fun of it, a shot of the newly redesigned tsukubai (water basin for washing hands) outside the tea room at the Japanese House:



The next day we all came together for Sakura Sunday, which is the culmination of Philadelphia’s three weeks of cherry blossom-related events. There were Japanese cultural activities, music, and general merriment all around the Horticultural Center, which is the location of one of the major cherry tree plantings in the area. Unfortunately, because of the unusually warm spring, the cherry blossoms were almost completely finished blooming by festival time (except for the late-blooming double-blossom variety), but we were very lucky to have absolutely gorgeous weather for both days.

We were set up in one of the Horticultural Center’s greenhouses, surrounded by plants, underneath a little tent for shade. We had people lining up to get in about half an hour before each demonstration, and due to the limited space we could only fit 50-60 people in the room, but there were more standing in the doorway looking in.

This first photo is Taeko-sensei doing the same procedure again (Drew is sitting behind her):



This is the first demonstration; the first guest (drinking in this shot) is Mary Lynn, one of our students; the other two guests are volunteers from the audience:



This photo is from our second demonstration; the first guest (with the bowl in front of her) is Terry, another of our students, and the other two guests were festival volunteers from Philadelphia University. I’m on the right, acting as assistant (hanto):



In this last shot, Mary Lynn and Drew are serving tea to the Cherry Blossom Queen and her entourage, who flew in from Japan as special guests of the festival:



We’re always grateful to have so much interest during cherry blossom time, and to be able to enjoy the beauty of the season. I hope that you had some wonderful cherry memories too!