The sweet we had at Robiraki was a sweet bean soup, called zenzai. It is especially welcome at Robiraki when the weather has turned cold and rainy and the guests leave the tea room for a short break outside. I have a request for the recipe as follows:

Ingredients:

1 lb adzuki red beans (454 grams)
10.5 oz. white granulated sugar (300 grams)
10.5 oz dard brown sugar (300 grams)
1 Tbls. usukuchi (thin) soy sauce
mochi (sweet rice cakes) or boiled dango
roasted chestnuts (optional)

Check the beans carefully and discard any broken or off color or misshapen beans. Rinse the beans in cold water several times then soak overnight in plenty of cold water to soften. Drain and discard soaking water. Rinse beans and cover with fresh cold water. Gently bring beans to the boil and skim off the foam that comes to the top of the pot. Boil gently until the beans are soft and cooked through. (about an hour).

When beans are done, pour off the water until the beans are just barely covered. Add both the sugars and soy sauce. Bring back to boil, stirring in the sugar. Turn down the heat and simmer for another 15 minutes. Taste for sweetness. You can add sugar if not enough. Simmer until all sugar is completely dissolved. The zenzai can be served now, but tastes much better if it is allowed to cool and sit overnight in the refrigerator.

When ready to serve, cut round or square mochi pieces and lightly grill until golden brown under the broiler. (Or from round balls of dango and boil until it floats). Heat the zenzai until very hot.
Place a few pieces of grilled mochi or dango in serving bowls and ladle the hot zenzai on top.

Optional you can roast and peel chestnuts and cut in half and put in the bowl with mochi and put hot zenzai on top.

This recipe makes about 20 small servings. I cut this recipe in half and reduced some of the sugar (for my taste) and had enough for 7 people for Robiraki. (5 guests, two mizuya helpers).

This also can be served over ice cream for a tasty dessert.

Go ahead make some zenzai this fall.

Portland Japanese Garden Presents:
The Bontei Tray Gardens of Marc Peter Keane
November 7–22
Free with Garden Admission

The 2009 Art in the Garden series continues at the Portland Japanese with a special exhibition of The Bontei Tray Gardens of Marc Peter Keane, featuring exquisitely designed, handcrafted wood and stone tray gardens by one of the world's leading experts on Japanese gardens. Keane is the author of Japanese Garden Design, one of the most popular books on this topic in the English language. He will be in Portland for the opening weekend of the exhibition on November 7 and 8, during which time he will give talks about his Bontei as well as a presentation on Japanese tea gardens in conjunction with the debut of his soon-to-be-released book on this subject.

Marc Peter Keane's release of his latest book, The Japanese Tea Garden, will be available. This new book,  in which he describes the history, design, and aesthetics of tea gardens from T'ang China to the present day will be featured with a lecture and book signing. With over 100 stunning photographs, floor plans, and illustrations, this is the most extensive book on this genre ever published in English. The Japanese Tea Garden is a rich resource for garden lovers, landscape designers, and architects—and anyone who admires the striking aesthetic of the Japanese garden.

Lecture and Book Signing: The Japanese Tea Garden
Sunday, November 8, 4:30pm
$30 Members/$40 Non-Members
Place reservations online or call the events hotline at (503) 542-0280

I am happy to say that This Moment: Tea Ceremony Haiku by Margaret Chula is back in print. It is priced at $10.00 and is available from Katsura Press as is her wonderful new book What Remains: Japanese Americans in Internment Camps

Katsura Press
P.O. Box 10584
Portland OR 97296

This Moment: Tea Ceremony Haiku by Margaret Chula
ISBN: 0963855174 Paperback
Always Filling, Always Full by Margaret Chula
ISBN: 1893996115 Paperback
Haiku especially for Tea, written by award winning haiku poet Maggie Chula. This title is now back in print, and I recommend any of her books: Grinding My Ink, Shadow Lines or Always Filling, Always Full. “Visual imagery, which predominates in most English as well as Japanese haiku, is sometimes astonishing in Chula's. She has the uncommonly keen perception and compositional skills of a painter or fine photographer, while at the same time working with the music and implications of language.” Morgan Gibson, Kyoto Journal.

Sensei says: How you are in the tea room is how you are in the world.

Every time we step into the tea room, it is a microcosm of how we are in the world.

As I observe myself in the tea room, am I impatient, bored, eager, timid, attentive? Am I selfish, critical, generous? Do I treat others with respect? Do I show off? Try to compete? Question others? How do I treat correction and criticism? How do I handle mistakes?

"In a certain place for practice of the way of tea,
there hangs a plaque the reads:
'A Place Making a Shameful Show of Oneself.'
Once you pass through the entrance way,
you will experience no shame,
no matter how shameful a show you may make of yourself.
The practice room is where you are trained as a human,
even as you are sharply scolded
and hesitate to humiliate yourself in the process.
The principal aim of your training is to enable you,
when the time comes,
to perform tea splendidly and without shame.
This is the reason why all those who pass through the entrance way
of this place are prepared to endure severe discipline.
For it is in this way that
they gradually develop fine characters as people.
They cannot achieve this simply by reading books
and listening to others.
They must experience it with their own bodies."

~ Sen Soshitsu XV, The Spirit of Tea

PSU Center for Japanese Studies presents
Backstage to Hanamichi: the Color, Magic and Drama of Kabuki Lecture & Performance

Wednesday, October 21st, Time: 7:30 p.m.
$22.00 Tickets: 503.248.4335
The PCPA box office

The Japan Foundation, Shochiku Co., Ltd and The Japanese American Cultural and Community Center are pleased to present Backstage to Hanamichi - A Behind the Scenes Look at the Color, Magic and Drama of Kabuki with lead actors Nakamura Kyozo and Nakamura Matanosuke of the world-renowned Shochiku Company.

Kabuki with its magnificent beauty and highly refined artistry has made it a rare jewel among the great theater traditions of the world. Its actors must undergo years of rigorous training in order to master its three artistic components of music (ka), dance (bu) and drama (ki) before being allowed to perform before an audience. In order to create the magic that is seen on stage, the kabuki actor is supported backstage by a team of unseen artisans and craftsman including costumer stylists, wig masters, musicians and prop masters.

Backstage to Hanamichi provides the audience with a rare glimpse into the traditional world of this centuries-old theater and the painstaking preparations that leads up to an actor's grand entrance onto the hanamichi stage.

The lecture/performance includes performances of two kabuki dance classics: Sagi Musume (The Heron Maiden) and Shakkyo (Lion Dance), contrasting the lyrical style of the onnagata (actor specializing in female roles) with dynamic, acrobatic style in the heroic Lion Dance.

This program is presented in conjunction with the 100th Anniversary Celebration of The Japan America Society of Southern California.

Students who practice Chanoyu are asked by their teachers to think of gomei or poetic names for tea utensils. Many students think it is a chore or silly to come up with names for your chashaku every week. But during the haiken, or the appreciation part of the ceremony, the gomei can heighten the drama, tell the story of the utensil or enhance the theme of the tea gathering.

Gomei, literally, most honoured name, are given to utensils, sweets, and other things related to Tea. Originally, names were given to various objects by great connoisseurs and Tea masters in the late Higashiyama period. Kobori Enshu gave many famous tea utensils gomei taken from poetry and literature.

Tea utensils may reflect nature by echoing particular seasons both in form and with their poetic names. In observing the seasons, there are many more than the basic 4: spring, summer, fall, and winter. For example, early spring is more like winter and late spring is more like summer. Flowers are a great indication of the season as they don't appear at once, but can evoke the time of year that they bloom. So noticing what particular flowers are in bloom are a good source of gomei. Also instead of just naming a flower, a good gomei may offer a description of the flower. For example, Kiku or chrysanthemum is a good autumn flower, but to use kiku as a gomei is a little general and not very poetic. If it is late November, the chrysanthemums are getting a little tired as their blooming season is coming to an end. So "rangiku" or ragged chrysanthemum might be a gomei for that season.

Gomei can also come from place names that evoke different feelings, seasons or memories. For example, the gomei "Tatsuta" refers to the Tatsuta river in Nara prefecture. In the fall this river fills with fallen red maple leaves and thus alludes to the momiji or red maple leaves of autmn. Likewise, Yoshino is a place where the hill sides bloom with cherry blossoms in the spring. With these place names, one can allude to the seasons without directly saying "cherry blossoms." It gives a little more sophisticaton, depth and feeling to the name.

For usucha and okashi (sweets) gomei can be very seasonal and light; sometimes they can be humorous, or emotional such as "chajo chashin" tea feeling, tea heart. When we get to koicha, however, the gomei are a little more serious. Many Zen words and phrases are used as gomei. For example, I have a scroll with a Zen phrase that says: White clouds come and go as they please. I might pair this scroll with a tea scoop name "Ao yama" or green mountain because the companion phrase to this is: Green mountain is unmovable.

Japanese literature is also a rich source of gomei. An example of this might be "Murasame" literally it means autumn rain. Murasame was also one of two sisters in the in the Noh play Matsukaze. The two main characters are the sisters Matsukaze and Murasame who once lived on the Bay of Suma in Settsu Province where they ladled brine in order to make salt. A Middle Counsellor named Yukihira dallied with them while staying at Suma for three years. Shortly after his departure, word of his death came and they died of grief. They linger on as spirits or ghosts, attached to the mortal world by their sinful emotional attachment to mortal desires. The name of the chief character, and title of the play, Matsukaze, bears a poetic double meaning. Though Matsu can mean "pine tree" (松), it can also mean "to wait" or "to pine" (待つ). Autumn Rain is strong and gentle intermittently, while the Wind in the Pines is soft and constant. Though the characters in the play actually represent the opposite traits - Matsukaze alternating between strong emotional outburts and gentle quietness while her sister remains largely in the background, and acts as a mediating influence upon Matsukaze. Many layers of meaning here: Autumn, love, tears, grief, desire, strong, gentle depending on how it is used.

So please think about your gomei for keiko next week and use your imagination and some of these suggestions. It will make your temae more interesting to both your teacher and your guests.

It is not often that we give ourselves permission to love, or let alone talk about the things we love. These days it is hip and cool to be cynical and make fun of others who are too emotional. Someone told me once that I needed to take a look at where I was spending my money, because there also was my heart.

These days, I spend my heart on chado, my husband, my grandchildren, my students, and sewing. Besides the essentials of food and shelter, there also I spend my money. Since leaving the corporate world, I have pared down my lifestyle to fit my considerably reduced income and I could not be happier.

Just as wabi used to mean to be disappointed by failing in some enterprise or living a miserable and poverty stricken life, some of my former associates would look at my present life and think that I am miserable. But wabi also means to transform material insufficiency so that one discovers in it a world of spiritual freedom.

Right now, I have never been more joyful in my life. Everyday is a good day. I feel aligned in living my values and in the integrity of what I do. I feel grateful for the opportunity to live this life. I love what I do, I love my life and I love to share with others some of the things I've learned through chado.

What do you love?

I  have talked with many people who don't like rules. These people think that too many rules in tea restrict them and don't allow them to be free to do as they please. But think if nobody driving on the road ignored the rules and just did as they please. The rules of the road such as staying on the right hand side of the road protect everyone and keep them safe. Or think of the rules of a game, if everybody just did as they pleased, then the game would be no fun.

The rules set boundaries, and in the tea room, everyone knows what to expect. There are appropriate times to talk and listen. There are rules for the role of the host and for that of the guest. The etiquette works if everyone is playing by the same rules. That is why it is so important to learn to be a good guest.

Remember that tea was developed in 16th century Japan, when there was incredible conflict and civil war. It was nearly a relief to be in the tea room, free from the conflict. If everyone observed the rules, people -- for a short time -- could get along, everyone would be safe and they could enjoy themselves.

Once the rules are ingrained into your consciousness, it actually frees your mind to be able to pay attention to other things, like the comfort of your guests, or creating that unique experience together. Communication occurs at a deeper level, and being present and open to profound insights can all happen in the rule restricted environment of the tea room. Amazing!