Japanese Tea Ceremony

I've heard a lot about the Japanese Tea Ceremony - even tried to go to one before, but the tour was canceled - but today I was able to participate in a unique class/demonstration/hands-on participation tea ceremony.  Usually the tea ceremony is pretty sacred, so being able to try my hand at it and ask unlimited questions was quite a treat.

The Japanese are often formal in many of their customs, their behaviors and their actions and all of this seems to culminate in the tea ceremony.  I'm not sure that even after a two hour class that I understand why this tradition developed or thrived but I'll try my best to summarize what I learned.  It's not really any wonder that I can't understand it in 2 hours, tea masters train for years and years (like 20, 30, 40 years!) to understand the full ceremony.

First, you have to understand that there are "tea masters", people who spend an entire lifetime cultivating this art, which is esentially adding hot water to a tea powder (matcha) and wisking it into a drinkable substance before being served.  That is the tea ceremony "boiled" down to its basest element.  Ha, ha!  However, the Japanese make sooo much more of it than that.

For instance, there are elements of the tea ceremony that must be present such as an "ikibana" flower arrangement (the simplistic flower arrangement that is truly Japanese), and there must be a board with Japanese calligraphy that is some sort of a thought to prevail at the ceremony.  And there is the dress, the tea master wears kimono which is a whole other art of itself on how to dress in it.  Then there are the tea bowls themselves which are often passed down from generation to generation.  Part of the tea master's job is to know when the bowl was made, where, by what potter, any special significance, etc.  In fact, they must know this information about all of the instruments used in the tea ceremony and may be "quizzed" by the participants about the details.  Wow!  Just for a drink of tea?

Anyways, the tea ceremony, from what I could gather, is almost a form of meditation, an art, where the guest is supposed to completely immerse him or herself into it and forget about the outside world.  I guess it's almost like a type of meditation where you are "in the moment" and at one with the tea.  I have to admit, before today I've never considered being at one with my tea, and this is coming from a gal with English roots.

After writing all this, I don't think I would do the ceremony justice by descibing it here, I mean wisking green matcha powder into hot water doesn't sound like art, but there was something uniquely beautiful and serene about watching the care and precision in which the tea master created the drink.  And you have to appreciate the years of dedication by the tea masters to learn the full art form, even though you quietly wonder why.  I guess that's a part of modern American society that we just don't know.  Afterall, how can I fully comprehend that there is a family in Kyoto who are 17th generation tea masters.  Wow, that's a long time!

So the photos will show a whole lot of bowing, and turning of the bowl front to back and back to front, and admiring the bowl, and saying certain phrases (well, maybe you can't see that in the photos!), and slurping of tea, but I think the true tea ceremony can't be summarized in pictures because the essence, the feeling, of the tea is something you can only experience hands on.