Tea Ceremony and the Five-Colored Lakes

5/28/17

The next morning I went with my friends Cormac and Ody to a local Tea Ceremony class.

When we arrived, we were in a room full of Japanese women and one boy and two girls. When we walked into the room we were met with a gasp and an “ooooooohhhhh!!!” From all the women. They were so shocked to see three foreigners had come to learn tea ceremony. They all had the biggest smiles on their faces and they all pulled out their cameras to take pictures of us. I felt a bit like an animal in a zoo, but I know they don’t mean it to be offensive or mean, so I let things like this pass.  And yes, it happens all the time.

Mitsue getting things prepared for the tea ceremony.

A woman named Mitsue who was a master of the Tea Ceremony. She spoke quite great English and was nice enough to explain the ceremony to everyone attending in both Japanese and English. There were about 12 people including the three of us learning both sides of the tea ceremony.

Mitsue, and her assistant Yoko,  were dressed in a kimono. I loved the design on Mitsue's obi.

We three foreigners started out on the side of the receivers. We were shown the proper way to pick up and use the chopsticks to take a dessert, and then pass the dessert plate to the next person. We were taught the correct things to say and the proper way to sit and interact with others.

Namely, when the dessert is brought out, you grab a small plate (in our case napkins) and you say to the person next to you “I’m going first.” Or “Osakini.” I was the first person in the row of receivers, so I was the first to learn the proper way, as a result I messed up every time, but was kindly corrected. Mitsue is such a nice teacher.

When you pick up the chopsticks to grab the dessert you must use your right hand palm down and pick up the chop sticks. You then use your left hand, palm down, to grab onto the chopstick at a lower position. This allows you to release the chopsticks with your right hand and grab them again with the palm facing up. You can then adjust the grip of the chopsticks to grab the dessert.  Every movement you make while participating in the tea ceremony is supposed to be graceful and beautiful.

After putting a dessert on your plate (napkin) you put the chopsticks back on the rim of the bowl/plate/whatever and pass the bowl to the floor both in front of and between you and the next person. They then say “Osakini” to the person next to them and you repeat the process until the end of the line.

In this photo you can see Ody using both of his hands to gracefully shift the chopsticks into the correct position in his hands.

And here he is passing the desserts to the next women in the line.

While this is going on the people on the other side of the room are preparing your bowl of tea.

When they are finished they move the bowl of tea a full arm’s length on the floor in front of them and then slide their entire bodies across the floor on their knees to kneel in front of the bowl again. They repeat this process until they have placed the bowl of tea in front of you.

When you pick up the bowl of tea, you are supposed to pick it up with your right hand and place it in your left hand with the fingers supporting it from the bottom and your thumb supporting the side. Your right hand holds the sides of the bowl with the fingers in front and your thumb towards you. You then rotate the bowl 180 degrees using two motions of spinning it with your right hand. After this you are supposed to drink the bowl of tea in two or three gulps, but we foreigners were told that it was fine if we needed to take more, smaller gulps.

When you are done drinking the tea, you are supposed to take about thirty seconds to a minute admiring the bowl that you just drank from. You are usually given a nice piece of pottery to drink from so you are supposed to admire the craftsmanship, the color, possible grooves and swirls in the clay, and the lacquer used. When you are done you place the bowl in front of you on the floor. The makers then slide across the floor on their knees to retrieve it.

After that there was a ten minute break where we talked with some of the other people attending and socialized. I took this opportunity to talk to Mitsue and her friend Yoko, who was also on her way to becoming a tea ceremony master.

When the break was over, we switched sides, now it was our turn to prepare the tea while those who had made it before were the receivers. I have more photos of the other women making the tea, because I could not take pictures while I was making. But, I have a few shots from some of the others in attendance.

This is all you need for a proper Tea Ceremony. A kettle with ladle to scoop hot water. A container for waste water. A tea bowl. A matcha container with scoop. And, finally, a matcha whisk.

This is my set up when I performed the tea ceremony. There was an electric kettle in front of the students that we used instead of the nice kettle.

This time we were given a bowl and we were given a small linen cloth. We were told the proper way to fold the cloth (into a long narrow fold,) and then we cleaned the bowl by filling it with a small amount of water and used the cloth to wipe the inside of the bowl and the rim, we then wrung out the cloth and dumped the used water into a small bowl next to us for waste water. 

You can clearly see the strips of cloth that were used.

You can see Yoko in the middle. She was helping Mitsue with the lesson, while gaining experience for herself for becoming a Tea Ceremony Master.

Mitsue is showing the proper way to clean the inside of the bowl.

And here you can see the electric kettle we used.

We then put the wet linen on a platter nearby in the shape of a Mt. Fuji (i.e. squashed a bit on the base with a mountain point where you would hold it with your fingers.) We then picked up the jar of matcha and the little bamboo spoon, and scooped a large “mountain” of matcha into the bowl. 

Here I am holding the red matcha container.

We then filled it with a little bit of water and used a bamboo whisk to mix the matcha really fast until there was a thick layer of froth on the surface of the tea. 

It was here that Mitsue told us that there are two schools of thought for tea making, one that you gotta have a thick layer of froth on the top, and one where there is very little to no froth on the top.

After we finished we placed the bowl a full arm’s length ahead of us on the floor. We then had to make fists with our hands and place them on the floor, lift our body weight onto our fists, and then drag our bodies forward on our knees. We then placed the bowl farther in front of us again and repeated the process until the bowl was sitting in front of the person we had made it for.

When the receiving group finished, we retrieved the bowl and thanked everyone for coming. We then started cleaning up.

By the time we had finished cleaning up, lunch had arrived. It was a toasted panini and a coffee from one of the women who was attending and helped organize this event. She made the paninis and coffees in a car out front in the parking lot.  

Cormac and I had avocado, spinach, and cheese paninis and a hazelnut coffee, mine was iced while his was hot.

We sat and socialized for a long while. After our lunch was eaten there was another demonstration.

It is a strange demonstration, so let me explain the background first. It is believed in Japan that many illnesses can be prevented if you keep your abdomen and core warm. So, you shouldn’t let yourself get too cold in the winter, or you will get sick (have you ever gotten sick in the winter? You have? See? Proof that a cold core is the reason!) Even in the summer you are letting your abdomen get too cold, so thankfully there is this device to help you heat up your core every night and keep illness at bay.

It is a small, handheld iron with a long handle. It comes with a cloth that you put on the abdomen of a child, (or adult) which has an illustration of a body and numbered circles on the body. These numbers tell you the order in which to warm certain parts of the body with the iron.

So the mother doing the demonstration had her daughter lie down as she ironed the girl. The little girl was a bit scared of having us foreigners watching, so she covered her face the entire time.

The mom placed the cloth between the child and the iron and moved the iron in small circles on her chest, both sides of her stomach, her legs, lower abdomen (above the intestine,) and the bottoms of her feet, among a few other locations. Each time she put the iron down and moved it in circles it lasted about eight seconds, where she would then remove the iron and use her hand to rub the heat around, or dissipate it, I’m not sure. She would then do it again on the same place. She would work on the same place on the body for about a minute and move on to the next one.  It took about seven minutes or so to warm all the spots on the body. She then recommended you do this at least once every night, and maybe do the process a second time.

Here the mother is using her hand to rub the spot she just ironed.

After the child-ironing demonstration was over, and everything was cleaned up Ody, Cormac and I left the tea ceremony event.

Ody had to go prepare an English lesson for his English school for adults. Cormac and I however had the rest of the afternoon to do whatever, so we decided to go check out the 5 colored Lakes (Goshiki Numa, 五色沼) in the Aizu region of Fukushima. It was only about an hour and a half drive from Fukushima City.

It is interesting to note that these lakes did not exist over 100 years ago. These lakes were created when nearby Mt. Bandai erupted around 100 years ago, and it created great landslides in the area. These landslides redirected rivers in the mountains and snow-melt coming off the mountains. Now these rivers and snow-melt gather in these alleys that did not exist before the eruption. 

These particular signs are located on the far side of the hiking trails when you reach the large lake at then end, Lake Hibara.

When we got there, we parked the car and started walking ore to the first, big lake. It is absolutely beautiful and the water is so blue! It is hard to believe the water can be so blue and the colors so vivid, even when you see them with your own eyes. But rest assured, all of my photos from this trip to the lake have no filter and they actually look that way.

At the entrance to the hiking trail and first lake, there is a picture display of a famous koi fish in the lake. It is a white koi fish with a spot of orange scales on its side in the shape of a heart. If you are able to spot it then you are supposed to have good luck in love. We never saw that particular one, but we saw plenty of beautiful koi fish!

This fish we saw further up the hiking trail. He followed us for a short distance in the water.

The first, and biggest lake in the series of lakes, has a small shack on the side of the docks that will rent a rowboat to you for thirty minutes. Cormac and I thought this would be fun and promptly hopped in a boat and rowed out onto the lake.

The writing on the boat is backwards and upside down. I think it was painted that way so you could see the name in the reflection on the water.

Cormac rowed about fifteen+ minutes down along the lake. It was a beautiful sight and so much fun! We passed parts of the lake that were shallow enough that you could see the bottom. The water was also amazingly clear!

After snapping a few pictures it was my turn to row back. On the way out, Cormac was rowing against the wind, but I had the benefit of the wind helping me along, and we made our way back to the docks with a minute to spare.

First time rowing a row boat. The struggle is real.

When we finished with the rowboat we started walking along the hiking trail. It was around 3:00 p.m. at this time. The trail started out really interesting with many sections of rock and tree roots that you had to climb over to make your way. This didn’t last too long though, and soon after the trail leveled out and it was pretty easy going.

We passed many lakes, most all of them were an amazing stunning blue.

This is the lake we rowed our rowboat on from above. While we were walking past it, we saw another couple in a boat below.

Some had viewing platforms and some had benches where you could sit and admire the beautiful nature around you. Unfortunately I didn't think to get photos of these viewing platforms.

This lake had a river running into, and out of, it on one side. The middle of the lake had a section where it was more shallow than it was one either side. This created a barrier in the lake. One side of the barrier got a constant supply of fresh water from the river, while the other side had stagnant water that turned that side of the lake green while the side with the fresh water was blue. The shallow section in the middle was brown. It made for the most interesting photograph.

 Here is the river running into this particular lake. 

There was a second lake that had a similar thing going on, but this one had slightly different colors.

The river flowing through this owe was a little slower and a little flatter.

We continued on and saw many beautiful views of the lakes.

We were not pressed for time, so we didn’t hurry along and made the most of our time at the lakes. 

By the time we were getting to the end of the trail (that ended at a large lake called Hibara Lake, which itself had its own hiking trail) it was nearly 6:00 p.m.

About five minutes from the end of the trail, before we got to Hibara Lake, there was a small trail with a map on a plaque nearby. The trail on the map looked like it only went a short distance into the woods.  So we decided to see what was there.

We walked for only about three minutes before we came up on this great stone altar and Buddhist shrine in the forest. It was so cool!

We walked back to the trail and made our way to the parking lot of the visitor’s center and a popular viewing point at Hibara Lake. This is where we saw the signs that explained the origins of these many, colorful, lakes.

At Hibara Lake you can see a bunch of ‘Islands’ with trees all over them. You can see them pretty well in these photos.

You can see them mostly on the right side. They are sticking up out of the water.

The sun was starting to set, and we figured we had just enough time to walk back to the car before we were left in the dark. So on the way back we enjoyed the views of the lakes once again. In fact, some of my favorite pictures from my entire time in Japan are these ones below. They are so beautiful and the light from the setting sun lit up the water and the trees in such a unique way. These views were definitely among my favorites. 

When we were pretty close to the beginning as we were walking past a viewing point, I had to stop and take a picture. The sun was shining on the trees so there was a beautiful view of the green and yellow leaves of the trees. There was also no wind, so there was a perfect reflection of the trees and hills in the waters of the lake. It was so beautiful I literally couldn’t even.

This one. This is my favorite photograph from my trip.

We walked along and we saw this beautiful view of the rowboat lake once again, this tie with the beautiful reflection of the trees during sunset

We got back to the car, the sun had just set, but the sky was still light, although growing darker eery minute.

We started driving towards Fukushima City where we could get something to eat. About ten minutes down the road, though we saw a tiny little ma-and-pop ramen shop on the side of the road. We decided to eat there instead and went in.

The owners of the ramen shop were and old woman and her son. They were happy to have us and spoke to us while they walked to and from our table with food.

We ordered some raw horse meat (Basashi) and we ordered some Tomato-Cheese Ramen. It took a long time for the ramen to come out, but we were fine with that, we were talking and relaxing, and we were in no rush. We ate the basashi in the meantime.

When the ramen did come out, it smelled amazing and tasted even better! It had a tomato base, along with pork, hard-boiled eggs, cheese, bamboo shoots and leeks. It all mixed together to create the most beautiful, and exciting meal.

They also served us a tea that I thought was really tasty and was more like a broth than it was a tea. The feel of the tea (but not the taste) was like that of umecha. I asked what the tea was and he pointed to a box of this black pepper, collagen tea. I bought a box of it and took it home. (Update: It is Burdock tea with pepper and collagen.)

Here is a picture I found on Google. You can buy it online. I recommend it. It is delicious.

From here we drove back to Fukushima City where I dropped Mac off at his house and I continued back to Minamisoma.

It was such a wonderful weekend, so many new things happened and I saw so many new and beautiful places. I think the Five-Colored Lakes in Aizu are among the most beautiful hikes I have ever seen. I would love to go back one day.