ICIEA O-Hanami, or cherry blossom viewing, was April 19th this year...and surprisingly, there were cherry blossoms on the trees! O-Hanami is supposed to occur at the maximum blossoming of the cherries and is notoriously difficult to predict, which ICIEA had to do to organize o-bento (lunches), get the word out etc. Around Imabari, it was almost completely finished by the time of the event...but up on the hill at Shimi no Mori, the Sakura were still in full swing!
Like last year, I was part of a group that performed tea ceremony there. It went much better this time; I didn’t walk into the tree this year. And I now own my very own, traditional, boring dark blue kimono, and a pair of really cool zori (formal sandals) which don't fit me, to go with the geta (the other kind of trad shoes) that don't fit me either.Japanese traditional shoes: there are two kinds, the really odd looking everyday kind, geta, which are made of wood, have two pieces of wood on the bottom, and a thong strap on the top. And there are the formal (but to my western eyes, oddly, less formal looking), zori. They are usually worn with kimono, as kimono today are reserved pretty much for formal occasion. Zori are usually made of glossy, glossy, glossy plastic, dark red for women and black for men...I think they replicate the look of expensive, hard to take care of shiki (enamel), but they look cheesy, at least to me. I usually do my best to ignore them when i see them, out of respect for those forced to wear them...
Disbelieving the horror stories, (fool!) last August I bought a pair of geta for 5000 yen to wear to On-maku, the fireworks celebration here in Imabari. They only come in one of two modes for my size 9.5 feet: much too small, and too small. I was reassured that it was normal, even for Japanese, to wear geta with their heels hanging an inch off the back...(!!). Ok.
No socks of course. By the end of the evening the thong straps had rubbed skin off my feet and they were bleeding. Needless to say it hurt. I thought the scars were permanent but it seems they have faded just in time for this year’s Traditional Shoe Adventure.
In February, I was told that I would need a pair of zori for my tea ceremony performance. Last year I borrowed Yano-san's (not Minami's, another Yano), and later caught him wandering around barefoot at the festival. He was risking catching a piece of glass in his foot so I insisted he take them back and wore my running shoes for the second round of tea ceremony. Scandal!
Anyway, this year I would need my own...Needless to say I wasn't interested in some groovy black plastic ones (for 4000 yen), so I headed back to the mom-and-pop shop where I had bought my geta previously, in search of some alternative zori. I had seen some woven straw zori (echoes of the uber traditional, hand made farmer's sandals) with white cloth thongs and....bicycle tire attached to the bottom! Sort of like the hippy car tire sandals of yore.
I thought these were super cool, and decided to get a pair. I was able to obtain them for the reasonable price of 3800 yen. Yanagihara-sensei thinks they must be Chinese. Of course they don't fit (see above)...and when I put them on, they reminded me of this, rather fiercely. I limped around for a few hours.
But they worked a charm for the tea ceremony.
I was much more relaxed this year, and as a result the complex details of the tea ceremony seemed to flow much more, and, well, it just went entirely more smoothly. As mentioned, I didn’t walk into any overhanging branches, knock off my zori, and so on...For the first time, an enjoyable experience.
Two weeks previously, on my way to tea lessons one Monday, I noticed on the Tonda river a glorious explosion of blossoming trees stretching west on both sides of the river! Quite beautiful.
My tea teacher, Tabusa-sensei, suggested I check it out, and, upon exploration in the early evening, I found a large tent stall selling food and groups of people picniking under the blossoms. It was a wonderful neighborhood celebration, which I had been entirely unaware of previously.
