茶道 (Sadou - Tea Ceremony)

茶道, read "sadou", is the Japanese word for tea ceremony. The kanji 茶 means tea, and the kanji 道 means road. If you really pay attention to my Japanese of the day, three entries back, I believe, I used this kanji and the reading was "michi". Almost every kanji has at least two readings, and I'll go into that some other time, but when this kanji is used in a compound word, it is read as "dou", and it often implies "the way of", so this is like "the way of tea". It's the same dou that you have in Judo and Taekwondo and Aikido and Kendo. Now, if you know anything about Japanese tea ceremony, you probably know that it takes a loooong time to get a single cup of tea because there are so many steps to the process, and it is important that you get every one correct. I mean, it's even like, "pick up  your chopstick like this, turn it like this, hold it in your hand like this, now you may pick up your cookie".
Every Tuesday, we have one hour less of class, which is replaced by an optional cultural activity. Last week was ikebana (生花), or flower arranging, but I thought paying $10 for the flowers was a bit much, so I didn't partake. Since doing the tea ceremony was free, I thought it would be interesting. Luckily they didn't expect us to sit with our legs folded under us for longer than it took to bow to your server and take your cookie and your tea. Because THAT HURTS. I can't do it for more than 10 seconds. But the three women dressed in traditional kimonos who were showing us the ceremony could sit like that. And remember every tedious step. From walking into the room, sitting down and closing the door, bowing to everything in the room after walking in weird patterns around the room.
After watching the tea ceremony being preformed, we were then slowly served our own traditional Hikone sweets and Macha, green tea.

You are supposed to admire the artwork of the bowl

A small reprieve from the rain

Ow my legs!

Macha

I learned all the names of these tools in a Nancy Drew computer game once...I forget them now

This video is a tad long, but you can see what is going on for parts of the tea ceremony. My plan was to subtitle it, but the video is at max volume and I can hardly even hear it (try to hear it during that silence between the songs). So instead I put music over their talking. Sorry about that.

So that is the most interesting thing that happened yesterday. That and the typhoon, but it really wasn't all that climactic. Apparently Tokyo got hammered by it though. Because of that whole situation I was pissed and I was cranky all day because JCMU makes us stay over night and yet they don't give us food even though they know we don't have any, so I went without breakfast. The last class of the day was rather enjoyable though, and Alex and I went with friends to the convenience store and then came home to Okaasan's cooking, so the day turned out alright. Except now I have to memorize my speech I'm expected to give tomorrow. Even though we JUST gave speeches on Monday. Ugh. Brain, please don't hate me.

Mary

Location: MY BED! (surprised?)

Mood: Is desperate want of a bath! (ToT)

Listening to: Isunova - E.S. Posthumus (a gift for you guys again: http://www.mediafire.com/?h95dyh8g26a2c61)

Japanese for the day: 足がしびれている ashi ga shibireteiru - My legs fell asleep. 

(^this is the first sentence I ever learned how to say in Japanese, no lie)