Wally Nes’ Blog

‘t is that time of the year
for all to gather in good cheer

And other silly bits of rhyme.

Today marks a day of celebration for my people (the Dutch). The birthday of Saint Nicholas, a day marked by celebrations, family togetherness and gift-giving. T’was this night that ol’ Saint Nic visited every family with children and left a little something in the shoes laid out for him. ‘Course his real birthday is tomorrow . . . I like presents, but I wouldn’t have put a man out on his birthday to do all of that. Not that I held the same belief as a child.

Being in Japan however puts me somewhat off Saint Nic’s delivery route. As ours rides around on a horse instead of Christmas’ Saint Nic who gets to fly through the air in a sleigh drawn by flying reindeer. But while Japan may not have the *real* Sinterklaar, he did see fit to send a helper to the embassy, and we certainly appreciate the gesture by the old man who I dare say is busy enough these days. I was forced to miss the boat comming into Yokohama harbor as I was knee deep (or face first, depending on the precise time of mooring) in snow somewhere high in the Japanese alps at the time.

This did not, however, however mean that I was going to do nothing with the occasion. This being a special occasion, and me being in Japan. Today, I took part in a tea ceremony.

Now, a tea ceremony is not just about the tea, and while the wiki article also includes the flower arrangement and caligraphy. Usually even the garden outside of the tea house is included in the proceedings, as these set the scene. One should come into the tea house with a “clean” head (leave your cares and sorrows outside). To help accomplish this they made the door too small for both your body and your sorrows.
Ok, the door is there so that everyone will have to crawl through, eliminating social rank. But, condisering there are such things as first, second etc guest with different roles and responsibilities . . . . one wonders if this is not an empty gesture.

All in all it was a nice ceremony though, I don’t have any pictures of the ceremony itself. But I may get some from the other rude bastards that make up my program, who did take some. ‘Course I’ll have to ask nice and hope they don’t read this blog.

I’ll leave you with these though. Which are decent sort of performances.

And yes, green tea is made from powder, what are you? heathens? You put herbs in a bag and hang it in boiling water? ? ? Geez. Actuall, from the wiki text you can see there’s different kind of ceremonies, and different kinds of tea. Outside of these “まちゃ” there is  also “こちゃ”, which is the kind we know.

I will now spend the rest of Sinterklaas in bed, as I’m sick and I want to get some more sleep

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Quote of the day:

Aerodynamically speaking; Bumblebees can’t fly.

Noone having told the bumblebees about this though, they fly heedless of it’s impossibility.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 at 2:53 pm and is filed under Japanese (Culture). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.