Sado - the way of tea!

Attended some form of Japanese tea appreciation session at Chado Urasenke Tankokai S'pore Assn at Liang Court today.



It was pretty interesting to know that there are actually so much to learn about the traditional Japanese way of life through something as simple as sipping green tea. There's supposed to be a great deal of respect exchanged between the host who serves the tea and the guest who gulps it down.



And then i met the people of the SMU Jap Cultural Club led by one of the SMU Social Anthropology professor who's a japanese. And there were these 2 chinese girls who spoke japanese like as though it is their natural language. It was impressive and I really hope I can see myself with such fluency and enunciation in a few years to come.



And here's the 5-dollars' worth of tea I got to savour...just a bitter mouthful but with lots of meaning behind every movement from holding the bowl to addressing the host and the person next to you.

Oh yeah, not to forget, kneeling on those tatami was a real pain in the ass. I gave up kneeling after 10 minutes and was sitting cross-legged thru'out the whole session...so much about poise and gracefulness..haha..