Tea House

Entrance to a large tea room.

An entrance to a small tea room on the other side of the larger entrance. That is a small wooden door. One must crawl through to enter.


A window screen.

Tea Sweet

Big Sister's high school tea ceremony club will hold a tea for American students. She is sampling tea sweets from different shops. Tea sweets are seasonal in taste and decoration. This one is decorated with a Chinese bell flower. It is a summer and early fall flower.

Tea Ceremony Book

Big Sister is in the tea ceremony club at her high school. The club will perform for some students from the American School. The members feel they need to practice English. Big Sister will help, but the club advisor has found some books for them to learn the English words for the utensils, etc. This is one of the books.

It was written by Grand Master Soshitsu Sen and published by the Urasenke Foundation in Kyoto. This book has many photos of the ceremony developed by this Foundation. There are different styles of the tea ceremony. This is one of them.

Tabi

Big Sister had to buy tabi to wear when she performs the tea ceremony at her high school festival. Only members of her club will perform. They will wear yukata (summer kimono).

This is the bottom of the tabi. There is a fitted toe so that she can wear geta (wooden sandals) with them. Of course, she will only wear the tabi on tatami (straw mats) during the performance. (We never wear shoes or slippers on tatami.)

The package actually has instructions on how to put on the tabi.

Tabi Detail

Big Sister asked me this morning if I wanted to take the tabi out of the package to take pictures of them. Of course! Why didn't I think of that?! I quickly scanned these details. Click on the pictures to enlarge them. These are made of thick cotton. The cotton on the soles have a texture and pattern.

This is how the tabi are fastened. There are flat metal hooks, but no metal eyes. The hooks hook into double threads.

Here are the metal hooks. Note the little man engraved on the top two hooks. He is on bended knees bowing to us.

Tabi Package

The bowing man is on the package, too.

This is on the front of the package. It indicates that these tabi have metal hooks or clasps.

This is the company information. There is a telephone number there for those of you living in Japan.

Summer Sweets for Tea

Big Sister is in the tea ceremony club at her high school. She practices the traditional tea ceremony with its members. These are some samples of summer sweets that can be served with the tea. They are all gummy and sweet. The one that looks like a lemon slice doesn't taste like lemon. The one with the flowers on top is gummy inside but has a wafer on top.

Big Sister will take some utensils and some sweets to the States to show the tea ceremony to family and friends. The teacher who sponsors the club is lending her some things and is helping her find some sweets.