The Hendersons in Himeji: Tea Ceremony

On Sunday, Audrey and I were invited to a tea ceremony. One of my former Shogai students, who is now Audrey's student, is a tea ceremony instructor and wanted to share one of her passions with us. While we were excited to experience another part of Japanese culture, I was pretty leery of sitting on the floor for a couple hours. For those of you who know me well, you know that I just don't do floors very well. I have never been able to sit "Indian style" or "criss cross apple sauce" whatever you want to call it doesn't really work for me. I think my thighs are abnormally large and not flexible enough to comfortably contort for extended periods of time. Now Audrey on the other hand, having danced for years has no problem with the whole floor sitting routine and finds it hilarious watching me squirm around every 5 seconds as I try not to topple over or lose feeling to my lower extremities. So after waiting in line for about 20 minutes we finally headed into our tea ceremony room. There were probably 20 little Japanese ladies in our group and me... a giant, stiff, American. Man I felt out of place. Somehow I ended up sitting next to a lady who is famous throughout Himeji as one of the most honored and revered tea ceremony ladies. What are the odds that I, the stiff giant American would end up sitting right next to her! As if I wasn't already uncomfortable enough, I had her shifty little eyes on me the whole time as I tried my best to sit still and follow the eating and drinking rules. Twenty minutes later the ceremony was over. Thankfully I had not moved around too much and followed the rules pretty well. Unfortunately, my right leg had to take on for the team as it had been asleep for a good 10 minutes. I figured that I had made it through the worst, the ceremony was beautiful now on to bigger and more comfortable things. Well, I figured wrong. That was just the first of two tea ceremonies we were going to that day. So after leaving one tea room we went deeper into the building to another room. This time there were already people inside finishing up so we had too... you guessed it... sit on the floor outside and wait for them to finish. Now this hallway was small and cramped so there wasn't much room to stretch even if I wanted to. I decided at this point that if there was any possible way for me to avoid sitting on the floor I was going to go for it. I noticed there were some small stools at the back of the room that we were entering so I figured if I could wrestle one of them away from a little old Japanese lady then I would be in the clear. I waited until everyone sat down and I had scoped out one that was not being used. I asked one of our students if it was okay for me to sit there and she said that it was fine and that I could bring the seat over next to her and Audrey. Just as I grabbed the seat and started to move it there was a large murmur of Japanese throughout the room. A bunch of these ladies were waving their arms and shaking their heads at me. After a couple minutes of confusion and discussion amongst themselves they decided that I could not move the seat and that I had to sit where I was. This was fine with me as long as it meant I could maintain feeling in my legs. I enjoyed this tea ceremony much better from my new spot. Overall it was a great experience. We love learning these small nuances of the Japanese culture.