Extreme Tea Ceremony

I’d never broken a bone in my body until a few weeks ago (I’d broken a bone in somebody else’s body, but that’s another story). Whether that is down to strong bones of a general aversion to bone-crunching activities, I’m not sure, but I would tend to lean towards the latter.

My unblemished record has now been wiped out, and in the most pathetically listless and humiliating circumstances possible. I would love to say I damaged my skeleton while putting my body on the line saving a cat from a tree or dragging an entire family from a burning building. I’d even settle for a run-of-the-mill pratfall or an innocuous sporting injury. Alas, despite my propensity for tripping over my own feet and the vigorous way in which I approach a game of table tennis, that was not to be. The culprit, in this case, was the traditional Japanese art of sadō, or tea ceremony.

A bone in my right foot is fractured and the whole bottom half of my leg in plaster as a result of this deceptively vicious and dangerous art form. For those unacquainted with Japanese tea ceremony, it is a highly stylised and very ornate ceremonial process of preparing, serving and receiving Japanese green tea, or matcha. Every school has a club, and experts in the art spend years becoming adept at its various intricacies.

As this was my first (and I daresay my last) experience of being involved in the process from start to finish, I was ill-prepared for its rigorous demands. I had been served tea during tea ceremony before, but had never been involved in the preparation and serving side of things. Even in the act of receiving the tea there are various protocols to be followed, and being an ignorant foreigner, I had almost entirely failed to observe them. The thought of participating in the other, more involved side of proceedings was, therefore, somewhat daunting. However, when I was invited to join in with the club at the primary school I teach at one afternoon, I surmised that I would not find better circumstances in which to take the plunge. Surely a group of 7 and 8 year-olds would be just as unfamiliar with the necessary etiquette as I was.

Of course, that was not the case. The children knew exactly what they were doing. From the very start it was apparent that I was the amateur here.

Matters were exacerbated with the arrival of the tea ceremony teacher, resplendent in glorious kimono. Something about a Japanese person in a delicate kimono, with the prim and precise air that seems to go with it, puts me on edge. I become entirely paranoid about doing or saying something grossly coarse and boorish and offending them deeply. As such, I become a bundle of beatific bows, hugely eager to please.

In this frame of mind I removed my shoes and sat down on the tatami flooring, adopting the seated seiza position as the children were doing. This was to be the beginning of my downfall. The seiza position involves kneeling down, with your body weight resting on your feet and shins, and is notoriously uncomfortable and painful for those not well practiced in it. My miserable legs screamed out in despair almost immediately, but my brain, in its desperate desire not to have me offend everyone present and subsequently be expelled from Japan, overrode their anguish. After a while, my legs began to settle down, numbness stole in, and I was able to devote myself fully to the tea based task at hand.

Much to my surprise, I actually found myself enjoying the process. A couple of the older students came over and showed me what to do with my tea cloth, devolving into fits of giggles at my initially pathetic attempts to recreate the intricate folding pattern they demonstrated. I did eventually master the cloth though, and so the spoon for measuring out the tea was introduced into proceedings. My skill with this instrument was not quite as assured, but I acquitted myself well enough. The actual tea making followed, which involved a lot of vigorous, yet at the same time delicate, whisking, in order to produce a frothy mixture. (There is an extremely vulgar joke to be made with the elements of that sentence, but I shall refrain from making it on the grounds that there were children involved in the proceedings.) Getting the concoction to froth convincingly is a surprisingly difficult thing to do, and my own output was rather lacklustre. (Again, I’m saying nothing.)

I served and was served tea, ate my little sugary tea biscuits, and as the business came to an end, was beckoned to stand up by the authoritatively attired teacher. Suddenly aware once more of just how little feeling was left in my legs, I nevertheless hoped that if I could rise quickly enough and manage to stand upright without toppling, it would be enough to ensure I didn’t look too silly.

I planted my left foot and raised myself precariously. It seemed to be going well enough. Without looking down, I attempted to plant my right. This foot, however, stubbornly refused to yield to the electronic pulses my brain had sent it, and hung down in a limp position. As the full weight of my body came to rest on the right side of my foot, I heard a sickening snap. I managed to quickly shift my weight back onto my other leg without falling over, and, in a panic induced mostly by a desire not to commit a terrible cultural faux pas, attempted to plant the right foot down again. The exact same scenario played out, followed by the same snap. I raised the leg once more and wobbled about on my still intact foot, not keen to repeat the process for a third time. The teacher, eventually noticing my predicament, skirted over and gently propped me up, no doubt deeply resentful of this lumbering gaijin she was forced to support.

Eventually, I was able to get both feet down on the ground properly, and stood on the spot in the middle of the room while waiting for numbness to leave my legs and be replaced with the inevitable rush of excruciating pain. Just about managing to hobble down the two flights of stairs, I returned to the staffroom and examined the damage. One side of the foot was swollen and fast turning an angry shade of purple. I stumbled into the nurse’s office and, through a mixture of basic Japanese, furious gesturing and bone-crunching sound effects, managed to explain what had happened. She had me put my leg up on the bench and procured the assistance of a nearby small child in holding a bag of ice against the swelling. At one point the small child yelled something to the nurse, who came over and slapped at my delicate foot. As I looked down I saw a smudge of bloody mosquito which had been quite happily feasting on my flesh. The results of this were to provide the most agonising aspect of the whole ordeal over the next few days, once the leg was encased in plaster.

And so encased in plaster it remains. I was taken to the nearby orthopaedic clinic by one of the infinitely helpful and lovely teachers at my school, who proceeded to take photos of my consultation and cast fitting which she later presented to me as part of a photo album she had been compiling of my year at school. It’s a wonderful reminder of a wretched past month.

A blisteringly hot July has resulted in a horrendously uncomfortable, and increasingly whiffy, leg, and has meant I have missed out on trips to the beach and to the river and on a planned ascent of Mt. Fuji. I did think about replacing those activities with a spot of ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging, but having learnt the hard way about the hidden perils of something as seemingly harmless as tea brewing, I am weary of falling afoul of a rogue petunia or lily.