Saturday, July 3, 2010

Tea ceremony and interview day (Fri)

Sorry for not updating for two days in a row! Sad, they were so busy too! Here's a little summary of both of them. I couldn't update because last night I chose to go to bed at 9pm and I slept for 13 hours. :D Maybe now I'll get over my cold!

On Friday we gave interviews to Japanese college students in our classroom, because we have been writing surveys and will soon do a report. Mine is about the train system and how long people commute, what they think is rude on the train, and if they have ever missed the last train and such. It was a lot of fun to ask questions! So far, it seems like most people think that annoying behaviors on trains are:
-speaking in loud voices
-talking on the phone
-snoring
-sitting on the floor
-crying babies
-bad manners
-eating foods that smell strongly or drinking alcohol

After class, we ate lunch and then headed to a very beautiful tea house in Tokyo. There we learned the traditional art of Japanese tea ceremony. It was so fascinating to watch and participate. I felt like a spaz because I didn't know what to do or say, and we stumbled a lot while doing it. The tea room was very small but most were, and it was an exceptional ceremony. The room looked like the one in this picture except three times smaller. I was surprised that we could fit so many people into it!
This looks more like it, actually, except even smaller.
The reason why the door (not seen in this picture, but very low to the ground so you had to crawl into it)  is so small is because in the Edo period, samurai would come to tea houses. Their swords couldn't fit through the tiny door. They weren't allowed to bring their swords in, so they had to leave them outside because inside everyone had to be equals.

We ate small, extremely sweet cakes made of red bean paste and followed it up with bitter tea. The mixture was very good! The second dessert was a little candy that looked like fireworks but was solid sugar on the inside. It was too sweet for me but I ate the whole thing so I would be respectful. :) Then we had another cup of bitter tea. Before picking up the tea, you have to ask the person to your right if they have drunk enough already, because the person on the right is the most respected. Then you say to the person on your left that you will respectfully have tea first. When you receive tea, you have to rotate the cup clockwise so the design is facing your guests, then bow to the tea because it is an expensive and sacred herb. Then you take one sip and tell the tea master that it tastes very good. Then you can drink the rest. I really loved the ceremony, but it was so hard to remember the phrases! They were in highly respectful Japanese, which uses different verb patterns than common Japanese.

The flowers were picked from the mountains that morning and our teacher told us before the ceremony that the tiny cakes were each like $10, very pricey. Everything was so perfect. :D

Ethan always steals my pictures for his blog so I'm going to steal his paragraph about the tea ceremony: "The Japanese tea ceremony is really complex and has a lot of rules and movements according to the formality of the situation. In Japan, some women will spend their whole lives studying and performing them. The woman who served us today has been practicing it for around 50 years and it definitely showed. All her movements in making and serving the tea looked really precise and rehearsed. Not only that but the tea she made was really good ha. Unfortunately, they made it a bit sweeter than they normally do since they have the belief that foreigners don’t like it so bitter but I would have preferred that. Still good though. The room itself was small as it usually is and we had to enter through a small hole in the wall. This was based on tradition as back in the day, it was meant to prevent the entrance of katana swords. Also you are supposed to take off jewelry and such because in the tea ceremony everyone is supposed to be equals. So all of that was cool."

At home I had a little bit of a rough night and then talked to my mom on Skype. I was so sick but we talked for a long time on the phone even though I wanted to sleep. Then I went to bed!

4 comments:

  1. The tea house pictures are amazing!

    I loved the detail explanation of the tea ceremony events. That sounds really fascinating!

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  2. I agree with the list of things that Japanese people consider to be rude behaviors on trains, except the talking on the phone.

    Also, is it a little bad that the tea house picture made me think of the brothel in "Lust, Caution," which doesn't even take place in Japan? :D

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  3. hello, caroline.

    I love your picture of the Japanese tea room. May I borrow the image for my class?

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  4. Hello, there! I did not take that picture of the Japanese tea room, but I think you could probably use it for a class. I used it just for fun. :)

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