Rikyuu Ochakai
Apr. 1st, 2006 03:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wakeiseiyoWhee. My teacher's teacher had a small ochakai for her students (and gracefully extended the invitation to us) celebrating the anniversary of Rikyu's death [which I suppose sounds horrendously morbid, but really - I don't recall anyone being especially sure of Rikyu's birth, and his death was quite the event, both politically and culturally, so... there you have it. Happy Death-Day!]
We played two rounds of kagetsu (which is confusing as all hell "even after playing it 100 times" according to my sensei) and then had some tea and admired several varieties of kobukusa. I managed not to fall on my face, though my kimono was too small and gapped open horrendously every time I moved. Oy. Oddly enough, the highlight of the day wasn't the tea or the really nifty sweets, but the pouring rain - K-sensei's tea house is not only built onto the back of her western-style home, but the whole construction is toward the front of the lot, leaving a HUGE backyard area that has been carefully constructed into as proper a Japanese garden as possibly in sunny SoCal. Watching the rain dripping off the different flowers, trees (that have even been encouraged to grow crooked and 'weathered' looking) and with the hazy foothills in the distance... if there is a Heaven, that's the one I'm going to - pleasant company, mellow-yet-beautiful weather, and good Tea. When the sun came out toward the end of the event... just wow. Everything sparkling, the flowers standing out as the most amazing contrast to the rest of the greenery and damp rocks -- it's abundantly clear where the Japanese get their sense of color in kimono with organic contrasts like that.
One of the ladies there had for sale a custom poly kimono she had ordered but didn't get the color she wanted, also - a soft, brownish pink that several ladies told me was too 'jimi' for me, but yannowhat? It FIT. Sleeves, hips... holy shit, I have a arareru-kimono that FITS. And for a discounted US $220, I'll take it! (Overtime is coming in handy like whoa.)
[And now I'm at the office to work several hours of overtime. Hey, it's money! And I get to play whatever music I want as loud as I want.]
We played two rounds of kagetsu (which is confusing as all hell "even after playing it 100 times" according to my sensei) and then had some tea and admired several varieties of kobukusa. I managed not to fall on my face, though my kimono was too small and gapped open horrendously every time I moved. Oy. Oddly enough, the highlight of the day wasn't the tea or the really nifty sweets, but the pouring rain - K-sensei's tea house is not only built onto the back of her western-style home, but the whole construction is toward the front of the lot, leaving a HUGE backyard area that has been carefully constructed into as proper a Japanese garden as possibly in sunny SoCal. Watching the rain dripping off the different flowers, trees (that have even been encouraged to grow crooked and 'weathered' looking) and with the hazy foothills in the distance... if there is a Heaven, that's the one I'm going to - pleasant company, mellow-yet-beautiful weather, and good Tea. When the sun came out toward the end of the event... just wow. Everything sparkling, the flowers standing out as the most amazing contrast to the rest of the greenery and damp rocks -- it's abundantly clear where the Japanese get their sense of color in kimono with organic contrasts like that.
One of the ladies there had for sale a custom poly kimono she had ordered but didn't get the color she wanted, also - a soft, brownish pink that several ladies told me was too 'jimi' for me, but yannowhat? It FIT. Sleeves, hips... holy shit, I have a arareru-kimono that FITS. And for a discounted US $220, I'll take it! (Overtime is coming in handy like whoa.)
[And now I'm at the office to work several hours of overtime. Hey, it's money! And I get to play whatever music I want as loud as I want.]
