Green Tea

On Sunday the Walkers were a little tired from their trip over and a busy 1st & 2nd day, and I still wasn't feeling well, so we decided to keep the plan simple. We only wanted to walk up to the temple on the far side of our neighborhood (only a few blocks) to give the Walkers their first real taste of Japanese culture. The day before, Chrissy and John had walked by it and saw some preparation of the temple grounds, so we suspected that their might be something like a festival or street market to offer the Walkers, all within a short walk.

Lining the steps up to the temple they had set up canopy tents with food and products for sale - similar to a yard sale. Many of the temples will have markets on the weekends, but this was the first time that we had seen this so close to home and at our temple. We shopped the street market for a bit loading up on inexpensive second hand as well as new things like dishes, arts & crafts, lacquerware... I especially liked the vendor selling "everything you can put in a bag" for 300 yen. Anita got a beautiful copper Shabu-Shabu pot and the sales lady tried her best to explain how to use it. We loaded up several big bags and in the end probably spent less than 10$ each. This, we decided, was the only Japanese "bargain" we had ever seen since moving here.
As we made it to the top of the hill and walked around the temple a lady handed us a flier for a tea ceremony in a house on the temple grounds. The tea ceremony was an unexpected bonus just like the market had been. We walked through the temple grounds to a tea house which is run by the city.

The house is actually much larger than a traditional tea house, and has several tatami rooms facing an inner courtyard. The gentlemen at the front of the building guided us to a room to await the beginning of the next ceremony.
Within minutes they again led us to the other side of the house around a courtyard to another tatami room. In this room they had a small urn set along one wall heating the tea pot .

All of the guests sat around the room on pillows facing the tea pot awaiting the ceremony to begin. The ceremony began with a young woman coming in and preparing a single cup of macha, a thick green tea, with her bamboo wisk. Another young woman then took the cup, bowed to the woman who prepared it, stood up and presented it to the first person with a bow. Each of us was then served, one at a time, in order, by our own young woman bowing as she presented us our bowls. Everyone in the room was very quiet and respectful.

The tea ceremony is very complicated and highly ritualized. The tea ceremony, for me, is a living metaphor for the Japanese culture. It can be summed up with a statement I read once that said "the tea ceremony was perfected in the 16th century".

On our way out of the tea house a man told us that the ceremony was a once a year event. The ceremony and events at the shrine were timed to coincide with the blossoming of the tsutsuki tree. So we were very lucky to have the festival timed perfectly with our plans for the day of exploring our own backyard.