Tea Ceremony-ing, Ohori Park and the Disaster Prevention Centre

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One of the classes I am taking as part of my course here in Japan is Japanese Tea Ceremony. I took it at first as it seemed like an easy but interesting class since most of it was practical. Some classes are genuinely spent sitting drinking tea and eating traditional Japanese sweets! However, since learning how not only to drink the tea, but also how to be a host at a tea ceremony, my interest in it has grown significantly. To me, tea is very important. As is a common saying in Britain, a good cup of tea can fix anything. However, what interests me about tea in Japan is the different type of importance it has here. With its long history and its remaining contemporary significance, tea has not only cultural importance but also religious importance too. I was lucky enough to go to a very important tea ceremony in a Buddhist temple hosted by my teacher's tea school; Nambo Ryu. The ceremony was to commemorate the death of Tachibana Jitsuzan who was the founder of the tea school and it was invitation only so we were incredibly lucky to be invited and to be given the opportunity to witness such a special ceremony! Since everybody serving the tea had to have the highest tea teaching qualification, it meant that what we would be experiencing would be of the highest rank!

The day before the tea ceremony our teacher had arranged for us to go to a special traditional tea shop and gallery in order to observe (and possibly buy) tea utensils. The shop was full of both local and imported pottery and utensils with all different patterns, colours and textures. I couldn't believe how expensive some of it was!! Some of the tea bowls alone were in excess of 2 million yen!!! But then some of the work on them was absolutely incredible. I ended up just buying a little pack that included everything I needed to be guest at a tea ceremony for 2000 yen. This includes a 'youji' (a fork for eating the sweets), a 'Sensu' (fan), 'Kaishi' (paper napkins for putting the sweets on) and a 'Fukusa' (actually used by the host to symbolically purify the tea container and scoop). The family who owned the shop were very welcoming and even made all of us a cup of tea, this is a true representation of traditional Japanese hospitality. In addition, after looking around and making our purchases, the family then invited us up into their house to see the wife painting some of the pottery ready for it to go on sale. Whilst many people in Japan will get the chance to see and buy traditional tea ceremony pieces, I doubt many people would have the chance to witness firsthand, it being painted so I felt incredibly privileged! After the tea shop we visited a liquor shop just around the corner and I couldn't believe how big their wine cellar is! Apparently they have people fly our from France each year and they do wine tasting events there so I'm hoping I'll be able to go to one of those. I was also surprised to see that they sold Pimms there (the first place in Japan I've seen) and even more surprised that nobody I was with (no-one was British) had tried or even heard of Pimms before! After this the whole group when for lunch at this little indian restaurant and the food was amazing. At the end our teacher got up and paid the whole bill! I couldn't believe it but I later found out that it is tradition in Japan for the teacher to pay for their students!

Sunday, the morning of the tea ceremony, arrives and I've got to admit I'm pretty nervous since we will be the only foreign people there and I know I'm bound to get something wrong. Two of the girls had bought kimonos since arriving here so they took this opportunity to debut them and they looked so cute!! As I didn't have a kimono, I'd been told to 'dress like I was going to church with my grandparents' (clearly my teacher doesn't know about my grandmother, 'Jamma' hahaha!) so I did my best to look conservative. First, we had a buddhist service which lasted about an hour. Despite the fact I couldn't understand what they were saying since it was all in Japanese, I think I did quite a good job of understanding what was going on. Some people gave talks and offered their thanks, they gave an offering of tea to the gods and then they did some weird prayer type thing where the monks were chanting and a box of incense was passed around for everyone. After this we were given a bento box for our lunch (most of which I can't even begin to tell you what it was but I ate it and liked it nonetheless) and were given numbered tickets for the two tea ceremonies we would attend. Whilst we were waiting, we met our teacher's tea teacher who we had heard loads about and it was so interesting to see him interacting with her because you could see how much he respected and idolised her. Overall, the tea ceremonies went smoothly, of course they weren't flawless; I simply cannot do the shuffling on your knees you do to get in the door and I definitely forgot to bow at certain points more than once. However, what was so nice about it was that everyone was so forgiving of any mistakes you made and it seemed as though they were just genuinely happy that you were there, showing an interest in their culture and trying! It turned out that there was in fact nothing for me to be worried about, I thoroughly enjoyed it and I can't wait for the next one.



Due to my lacking Japanese speaking ability I decided that I wouldn't go on a trip to stay with a family and to go to a primary school since I didn't want to come across as rude or ignorant! I was a bit disappointed that I missed such a great opportunity so I made sure I did something great with my weekend. I had heard about Ohori park in Fukuoka before I arrived but I'd not yet gotten the chance to go. Another of the girls did not go on the home stay so we decided to go to the park on the Sunday. Luckily for us, it was a beautiful day so we decided we'd bike there which took about 30 minutes. When we arrived we sat overlooking the water in the cute little Starbucks there and then cycled around the whole park, going across the islands in the middle of the lake. It was so nice because although there were lots of people there, there was still a very chilled atmosphere and the park looked so beautiful in the sun. I really cant wait to go in the summer. When we were half way around we saw that you could rent boats to take out on to the lake. This made me laugh as when I arrived in Japan I had been told that the boy who came to Fukuoka from Bristol Uni two years ago had sunk a boat on a lake and then swam away so I figured that this was that lake haha! Of course we decided to take a boat out and thankfully history didn't repeat itself and we managed to get it back in one piece haha!!



One trip I did get to go one with the university was to the disaster prevention centre here in Fukuoka. As most people know, Japan is very unfortunate in that it is at risk of lots of natural disasters including earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons, mudslides, floods...... So the disaster prevention centre is there to educate people in what to do in certain situations. Before leaving to go, we were shown videos of the huge 2011 earthquake and resulting tsunami which was pretty difficult to watch but after we were reassured that here in Fukuoka, we are at maybe the lowest risk of natural disasters in Japan. Although the head of our course told us how he had inquired about earthquakes before taking the job and he was told that there had not been one in over a hundred years but after only 3 months of being here he experienced a magnitude 7 earthquake!! I'd quite like to experience one but maybe not that big!

At the centre, we were first taught how to use fire extinguishers. We were put into groups of 4 then a 'fire' appeared on a screen and we had to aim the extinguisher at it, in the correct places, until it went out. After we went to the earthquake machine which is what I was most excited about. We sat at a table and the machine was put up to a magnitude 7 earthquake. We were told not to move this time but then a few of us got a second go where we had to grab the pillow we were sitting on, put it over our head and get under the table. Obviously it was a lot of fun at the time but I can't imagine it would be during a real earthquake! Next it was the typhoon machine which blew strong winds (I think it was 70mph) at you. This was also really fun, everyones hair went crazy. Lastly, we had to go through smokey rooms, a bit like a maze to try and find out way out by following the 'emergency exit' signs as you'd have to in fire. The trip was really good fun and I suppose I actually learned alot about what I should do in a disaster which is useful, especially when living in Japan!!!

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