Two LREI high school classes, the East Asian Studies History Elective and Eleventh Grade Mandarin 4, experienced a taste of Japanese culture in Manhattan last week during an authentic Japanese Tea Ceremony at Urasenke, a tea school located on the Upper East Side first founded in Kyoto by Sensei Rikyu, a 16th century Buddhist monk.

The goal of the trip was for students to experience Buddhist aesthetics through the art of the Urasenke tea preparation, an elegant, disciplined process with precise attention to detail. The tea room experience highlighted the uniqueness of the everyday, the commonplace, and the moment.

LREI students shared their impressions of the tea ceremony and described the intricacies:

Aaron R., a twelfth grader, called the experience “incredible.”
“The aesthetic there, while simple, was incredibly beautiful, and the garden was breathtaking. I was moved by how the ceremony was natural and how rooted in the earth. I loved how unifying and humble it was: bowing to one another, offering to one another to drink first, spinning the bowl to drink from a different side, the bowls that weren‘t perfectly spherical, as if to say ‘nothing in the world is perfect.’ It would be unnatural if anything was,” Aaron said. “The scroll on the wall had a big impact on me. When the host elaborated, explaining how one can never stand in the same current twice, he blew my mind. Because of that I set aside all my outside thoughts and just enjoyed the moment. The tea, while bitter, was very pleasant. Spinning the bowl in my hand was soothing, and the tea itself was very relaxing. The traditions, environment and significance of the tea ceremony was something to behold.”

Lucy B., a twelfth grader, saw the process of serving tea like a “choreographed dance.”
“It was incredible to me how precise they were in making the tea. I had noted when we watched the video on the tea ceremony the day before the intricate way the women had folded the napkin. The woman who made our tea in the ceremony replicated this art of folding the napkin exactly, right down to making a crease in the napkin with one finger,” Lucy said. “Everything in the room was calming from the way the bamboo walls flowed right into the garden to the way the natural designs on the bowls complemented the earth next to us. Everything in the space, including how our hosts worked within it, came together.”