Hello all,
The third and final semester has been passing quickly. Almost too quickly! School began mid-January and we were right back at it: chanting sutra and listening to the student speeches at morning role call, taking copious notes during the two lecture periods, scarfing down a hasty (but tasty) lunch and zipping out to begin studying tea in the afternoon in one of the six tea rooms or perhaps on the third floor. We would be doing one of our various jobs: Cho and Cho helper are responsible for taking care of the sensei in the morning classes and also preparing the tea rooms in the afternoon for lessons to make sure that we have everything we need and that they are reset for the next day after class. Hi 1 and Hi 2 (pronounced “he”) are responsible for making sure that we have hot charcoal / fire or “hi” and hot water for each of our rooms. The Hana person sets up the classroom for the morning lectures and is the daily record keeper for the office. They also arrange the flowers in the afternoon for tea practice. These three jobs each have one sempai and one kohai to help and support each other, though now we switch whether it will be sempai or kohai in charge to share the responsibility more. We also have additional jobs as needed: Haigata duty, which is shaping the ash in the brazier for the furo season. We only need to occasionally worry about that this season when we have a special temae procedure we are doing. We also schedule who has the sumi-temae, or the charcoal-laying procedure to do. This is the one most of us really enjoy as it isn’t something many of us have ever done outside of Japan: handling charcoal with chopsticks in very specific ways. I really enjoy it. After we finish with our tea lesson (around 4:30 pm) we are free to eat dinner at the cafeteria, run home to change out of kimono and then run our errands. I wouldn’t normally use the word “run” twice in that sentence, but that’s usually the tempo at which our evenings start at. This time of year the temperature drops so quickly when the sun goes down that it’s better to get the errands out of the way earlier in the evening before it gets to full dark.
Beautiful snow scenery
January was all about the New Year for the first half. The second half of January is delightful for the snow that began falling intermittently. I’ve been around snow before (and I know that many of you have been dealing with large amounts of it, so the newness has worn off). Walking to school wearing my kimono is so much fun since it’s cold but not terrible yet! I’m still delighted by the small things here and nature is so beautiful and wonderful. The days are beginning to get longer again and already one can notice a difference before and after school. The sparrows are nice and fat too and they are back in front of my window, which gives me a deep-seated joy.
Karla in the snow
I’m sure every place in the world has seasonal points that are unique for the region, but the Japanese (not only the traditional arts enthusiasts) have a deep seated regard for nature and they take real delight and joy in enjoying the elements of each period of time. Perhaps it’s because Kyoto understands this and so they plant things in an abundance that they make a real difference. For example in the autumn when the leaves turned red there was a period of about three weeks when the leaves were all red, nearly at the same time and then they were gone. Poof. These visual reminders of the passing seasons reminds me of how fleeting life is. Enjoy each minute of each day because you can’t save it up for tomorrow. Here and gone just like the blooms of a flower or the leaves from trees or the snow melting on the mossy rock.
Love to all 🙂