Day 16, Omotenashi embodied in the Tea World (chado) & tomorrow's presentations

  

First came the terms, background, and key points to see and appreciate the invisible but living art of preparing, serving, and receiving tea these past 400 or more years in Japan (and now outside Japan, too). Then the teacher led us to the serving rooms, one of authentic materials and scale, christened the JitsuGetsu-An (日月庵), then the larger tatami space equipped for groups of aficionados. This video clip shows the first group of servers under the teacher's instruction. Later, the sides change and the one serving now takes the role of guest. Covid-19 complications intruded in the visual delight of reading faces and enjoying the company of others. But to be on the safe side, all touching of bowls and serving began with hand sanitizer and then rather than wiping the shared bowl according to custom for all to drink from the same vessel, now each round required separate bowls to be supplied.

tea practice room & the adjacent authentic Tea Hut

According to the teacher, it takes lots of practice to do all the manners and forms without pushing too much concentration, but eventually the wordless process flows automatically and patiently, purposefully so that space and time allow the people to "read" each other's state of mind, striving always to make the guest comfortable and to feel the welcome of hospitality. External elements and motions can synchronize with the minds and hearts of those present. That is when something magical happens and everyone is in tune, making music together.


After lunch everyone began to make preparations for tomorrow's individual presentations of 10 minutes with questions to follow. Later a one-page summary will go to the organizers and city sponsor to join the reports from previous seminar cycles online for all the world to read, one edition in the participant's native language; one edition also composed in Japanese. 

REFERENCE, see the Ise and Japan Study Program at http://ise-japan.kogakkan-u.ac.jp  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 5, Echoing the craftsmanship of Ise Jingu this morning

Image
  shaping chopsticks, then burning a pattern in the wood Saturday morning we set off for the outskirts of Ise by bus, accompanied by several members of the international exchange volunteers to make something compact, functional, and with a bit of beauty - at least in the eye of the beholder. We sanded, shaped, and burned patterns or words into our very own chopsticks. Coming a day after a field trip to the Sengu-kan at the Outer Shrine, where refined work of weaving, forging, gilding, joinery, and so many other forms of skilled craft are documented, our own efforts were so much more modest. However, by sharing in something enjoyable together, it was easy to exchange experiences and ideas freely, getting to know each other a little better. The weather was brilliant blue skies with strong gusts of wind on and off. So after the group dispersed at the station near the hotel it was a good chance to walk around the city center in search of the Ise city library. A helpful staff member th...
Read more

Wonderings to begin with (November 30)

Image
 Within a week of the application deadline on November 15 the dozen seminar participants in the three-week study program in Mie-prefecture were notified and details for booking flights, meal restrictions, and so on were supplied for the timely arrangement for Feb. 20 to March 10, 2023. Reading about Shintoism through linked articles of (English) Wikipedia, as well as looking at the university host website with its past 10 years of participant summary reports helped to form a picture of the busy time ahead: mornings of classroom lectures and conversation, afternoons for fieldtrips to places presented on the Kogakkan campus in the morning. Others way to get to know the place include image searches at Flickr.com and Archive.org , as well as a look for "Irasuto Mappu" (illustrated maps of tour attractions, not drawn to scale),  イラストマップ.  Several informative Shinto books from the city library have been worth reading, too*.   Google images for "Ise イラストマップ" (illustrat...
Read more

On campus at Kogakkan University to begin "Ise and Japan Study Program" in earnest

Image
arriving at Kogakkan University for opening ceremony, orientation, lecture Part of the program, now in the 9th iteration - begun in spring 2014 and with Covid hiatus in 2020 & 2021, is for scholars young and old to get started in the many-faceted world of Japan through the lens of Shinto thought, practices, places and heritage. And another part is to rely on participants to interpret their weeks of study and field trips for others to learn, too. Thanks to the increasing place of social media in personal and professional communication and imagination, everyone will be posting on platforms of their choice, incrementally forming a larger picture of the subject for others to see, hear, or read. Covid is subsiding in a relative sense and so travel is getting easier. People will be able to gather from many places without dread of virus transmission. But that time has not fully arrived yet, so February 20 all participants supplied saliva samples for same-day processing in the PCR.LAMP tes...
Read more