November Kimono 11月の着物

2009.11.07

Since I already has this kimono out (see below), I decided to wear it again to my yakitoriya-san on Saturday. I had wanted to dress it up nicer and wear it with a Nagoya obi this time, but after teaching in the morning, getting my hair done in the afternoon, and then getting my pictures from my Kyoto trip onto the photo-frame thingie to show my friends at the Yakitoriya-san, I didn’t have time to mess with a Nagoya obi, so I just wore this hanhaba Hakata obi in two tones with a subtle woven design of flowers, and tied it in a simple kai-no-guchi bow.




2009.11.03

November is the New Year for tea, when the new tea is freshly prepared. The third of the month is also a national holiday, Culture Day, in Japan, so Tea-sensei held a special lesson for us in the afternoon, whereas usually many of us can only come on Tuesday nights after work on normal days. Often on this day, we play a game where people are assigned roles by lottery in a game, but this time Sensei just assigned us are roles, so we could carry out the part of the tea ceremony that occurs after the kaiseki dinner. Granted this explanation probably doesn’t make a lot of sense unless you already know what I am talking about.

In any case, we were divided into two groups of four each with half being the hosts and half the guests. Then we did the whole thing again switching roles. It started out with rearranging the coals in the hearth (this is also the season when it switches to using the hearth in the floor) which occurs in a tea ceremony immediately after the guests arrive and are seated in the tea room proper. This was then followed by a serving a bean-pastry and “thick-tea,” then light confectionary and “thin tea.”

Sensei forgot to have us arrange the flowers, so after this first round she had the first guest arrange the flowers for the alcove. Then we all switched roles and did it again. I was a guest in the first round and rearranged the coals in the second round. Sensei assigned us roles we normally don’t get to do, and I have only rearranged the coals in a limited number of times during the many years I have been practicing tea. Hence, I was not too good at it. It looks easy when done well, but certainly takes practice.

Tea-sensei said we could come in regular everyday kimono, but many wore New Year’s-ish kimono in honor of the new tea. I thought the most attractive kimono was the black tsukesage my friend wore with a large motif of stylized camellia flowers with their outlines embroidered in gold-metallic thread. My friend had thought they were tachibana (orange flowers), but Sensei said they were camellias. Yesterday, I looked the motif up in a dictionary, and of course Sensei was right!

I wore this reddish-purple komon with lots of tiny flowers in different colors, paired with a tsumugi obi tied in a ya-no-ji bow. I had been talking to Sensei a week ago about this obi which I had recently bought. It is too short and narrow to be a Nagoya obi, but too wide and long to be a hanhaba (half-width) obi, so I was asking Sensei what kind of obi it was and she said she thought it must be a dance obi and asked me to wear it this time so she could see it, but since Sensei is not a dance practitioner, she didn’t have any more information about it.




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