Traditional Tea Ceremony

On Saturday January 20th, we were invited to go to a Traditional Japanese Tea Ceremony. It was held at the Shirononishi Community Centre, not far from our residence. All of the ALTs and esteemed Japanese guests were there and buzzing with anticipation.


All of the foreign teachers (us) had to give a speech to the Japanese guests, many of which spoke no English. We tried our best to come up with something pretty much on the spot, and Cercey translated it into Japanese for us.



Next we were treated to a concert which included a Japanese singer singing Traditional Japanese songs accompanied by a pianist. Both performers were outstanding. The vocalist sang in a kind of opera style, and as with opera we didn't understand a word she sang! The pianist was very graceful in her playing style as her hands seemed to float gently across the keys and her arms softly lifted up and down placing her hands where they needed to be. We were taught a song with a very catchy tune (so catchy that if someone starts humming it, it is very difficult to get it out of your head!). The vocalist had the whole group singing in rounds and had us all involved. It was fun. The concert ran for half an hour.

There were many Tea Ceremony students dressed in their beautiful kimonos preparing the tea for us. One girl in particular displayed the Traditional sequence and method of preparing the tea. We watched her with keen interest. This included scooping the tea into the bowl, adding water using a special ladle, whisking the tea with what looked like a shaving cream brush, turning the bowl to the right and then serving.





But before the tea was served we were given a sweet which is meant to counteract the bitter taste of the tea. It has a white outer layer and is filled with sweet bean curd. A very, umm, interesting sweet.











The tea was quite frothy yet nice to drink. From left to right: Tina, Marie, Lauren and Me (Jodi).The girls were encouraged to have a go at preparing the tea in the Traditional way, we weren't going to turn down that offer. We all got to scoop, whisk and turn the tea. We had a type of tea cake to eat before tasting our own concoction. I had body shivers when I tasted mine as I had obviously gone overboard on the 'scooping-of-the-tee' part! None-the-less, it was a special experience.