Sado Experience and the Club experience

(By Xian-meng and Sharon)

Once a student finishes their classes, finish all their homework, and done with any chores, all they do is sit in their house and think of nothing, waiting for the next day to come… Of course that doesn’t happen, a person has interests and any activity relating to it, they treat it as their time killers. Of course, like minded people will attract each other one way or another. Like a string of fate, they will be pulled together. With these people, a club or circle is formed, a place where they can feel like they belong. As a university student, I’m sure many people have experienced or seen many types of clubs, as it is pretty common in universities. Sport types, construction types, entertainment types, etc.

Of course, Japan universities are no exception to this rule. Anyone who has experience with any of Japan’s media, will know these interest-type groups are separated to two groups, circles and clubs. Circles from what we have gathered, is a less serious form of a club, usually not always contributing to the school’s accomplishments. An example of a club, can be the sports teams. The sports team practice and practice, showing their results of their blood and sweat at the stage, where they will do at nothing but to take back their spoils of war. This adds to the university's name and further victories will guarantee more funds to be put on the team, as the team is actively promoting the university.

Now circles are a bit different, in that they are a bit more lax. Of course, depending on the management and logistics of the circles, there will be different rules and meeting times. Some will have irregular meeting times, having meeting whenever they want to, and some will have a proper schedule. Them being circles though, makes the environment is a little more lax in a sort of homey fashion. In that you don’t exactly have to be at the circles at punctual time. Fortunately for us, we had the chance to experience one of these circles. One of the roommates of our group members happen to be in one of these circles and invited us over for a cup of tea… No, really, a cup of tea, or a chawan (茶碗) of tea, to be more precise, as we got invited over the tea ceremony club!

Through the thicket of bushes and trees besides the campus of Senshu, there lies a hidden, not so hidden, path to a building, a building full of happiness and joy and hopes and dreams! Or it’s just a building filled with people spending their time doing or discussing things they like, whichever one works for you. The tea ceremony’s circle is located in that specific building. That building is one of the few “club” buildings, that serve as the meeting spot of these circles. Usually the circles that has deep roots in the Senshu history will have a club room of it’s own, the room being styled to the activities of the circle.

The tea ceremony circle is one of the more structured circles we have come across. There are usually two meetings per week, with interspersed お茶会 with other schools. The membership fee is minimal and it covers the fees for the various tools and it seems to be an annual fee. The tea ceremony alone has 50 members, but not all 50 members meet at the same time. The tea ceremony teacher rarely visits the club, and it is usually the senpais that teach the younger generations and provide advice after each ceremony. The tea ceremony's space was simple and elegant [pic]. There was a genkan, a room for baggage storage, and then a tatami mat room. The magic happened in the tatami mat room. A tea ceremony, like any stall or restaurant, has it’s maker and it’s customer. As we were the “customers” of the circle, we were the ones being treated to the tea. We observed a short ceremony performed by one of the younger members (with a senpai taking notes and acting as the key observer), while sitting in the seiza (正座) position. For those who don’t know, the seiza way of sitting is a traditional way of sitting in Japan’s culture, as to quote wikipedia, “To sit seiza-style, one must first be kneeling on the floor, folding one's legs underneath one's thighs, while resting the buttocks on the heels.” If anyone has not tried this style of sitting before, unless you are accustomed to it, although elegant, it is probably the most stressful way of sitting. You really have to channel your tolerance when sitting in this style. Although we were fortunate enough to be allowed to sit in the yokozuwari (横座り) way, literal translation is “side-sitting”, in which you sit with your knees bent, with the legs at the side. Yokuzuwari looking like seiza, but less graceful. We were served traditional japanese sweets (colorful mochi) while the tea was being prepared, and after about 20 minutes of kneeling, the tea was served to us. As said before, the kneeling can be painful and it apparently can take around a year to get used to. But we held on for the sake of our report!

One of the things that we noticed from the entire ceremony, was that everything was graceful, the server was graceful, the tea maker was graceful, the tea was graceful, the tools were graceful, the sweets were graceful, even the guests have to be graceful! When eating the sweets, you can’t eat like you normally do, with your hands. But instead we were given sticks as cutlery for the sweet. The sticks has two purposes, to cut and to poke. One of the main reason for stick to be there, is so that the guest can cut the sweet to smaller pieces, instead of just stuffing the sweet in their faces. The poking part is pretty self explanatory, poke it and insert in mouth, easy-peasy.

After the sweets were done, the tea was prepared and the “tea” part of the “tea ceremony” has begun~ The tea is not prepared in the traditional way, traditional being tea leaves being brewed. Instead it’s tea powder, or matcha (抹茶) being whisked with some hot water. Preparing the tea can be very stressful as sitting in seiza, and making the tea gracefully, emphasizing gracefully, as he really made it look like he was defusing a bomb, a trip could end up destroying us all. Of course, that is just an exaggeration, but he really was concentrating hard, wiping sweat from his head from time to time. As you would expect from tea powder mixed with just water, it was bitter, with the strong taste of tea (duh!).

After the session was over, we were able to ask some questions relating to the circle and it’s member. First and foremost, why did they join this circle? Because they like sweets. Not the best of intentions, but their desire touched me (Xian-Meng, fellow sweet-lover), so I’ll give them a pass! Of course other questions were asked, but those were about circles, which were explained above.

Overall, it was an eye opening experience, and we were happy we got to experience this tidbit of japanese culture.