Urasenke La Salle

Mastering chanoyu, the Japanese tea ceremony, takes at least 16 years.

by Sam Tremble

Iwasn't sure if I was at the right building — it looked more like a cottage or a weathered New England saltbox than a Japanese teahouse. The sliding Shoji doors gave me a clue, as did the sign next to the front door that read: "Japanese Tea House." I was already running late for class at La Salle University's Urasenke Tea School.

I felt like a very rude giant. Save the entrance, every door was at least a foot shorter than usual and the staircase in front of me was narrow and steep. Sensei Taeko Shervin was conducting a small class to the left and called up the stairs to instructor and La Salle grad Morgan Beard to announce my arrival. Two students in Beard's beginner class (the largest class that day) had never participated in a tea ceremony ("chanoyu" in Japanese), and the third had been practicing for only one year. As Shervin would later tell me, mastering chanoyu takes at least 16 years.

Beard led her students through the tea ceremony as if it were a choreographed ballet of extreme politeness. At times her instructions sounded like a driving instructor's: Turn two to five, two to five! Go in reverse! The tea ceremony's precision is rooted in the Japanese aesthetic of wabi, the idea that everything is transient and imperfect. So if beauty can be found everywhere, every action of the tea ceremony matters and takes careful deliberation. It's OK if this sounds like a contradiction — it is.

The attention to detail isn't limited to the elaborate please-and-thank-you dance — tea and pastries are the main attraction. We drank matcha, a traditional green tea made from young leaves ground to a powder. Grinding makes the tea stronger than a traditional steep. The host mixes each cup to a froth using a bamboo whisk. The water is heated inside a kettle resting on coals built into the matted floor, and the powder is kept inside a small jar in a mountain shape, which is not to be broken as it is passed around.

"[Urasenke La Salle's founder] Brother Keenan said to me, 'You break my mountain, I break your head,'" explained Drew Hanson, an advanced student of 20 years. Thankfully, the tea we drank came in vacuum-sealed bags.

Shervin treated us to a special New Year's pastry: hana bira mochi, a sweet lima bean paste wrapped in rice dough. The bean paste is filtered numerous times and the rice dough must be rolled and folded delicately so it won't split. Presented properly, it should resemble a snow plum hanging off a branch, representing the coming of spring. The please-pass-the-snow-plum routine became sloppy when everyone's chopsticks stuck to the rice dough and we reverted to using our hands — a violation of the ceremony.

As I bundled up for the cold in the entryway, Hanson lumbered into the room and bumped his head on top of the short doorway; a permanent spot had formed on his scalp from these frequent accidents. Nobody and nothing is perfect, so the point is to keep learning. Not to mention becoming more aware of where you are than where you are going.

(s_tremble@citypaper.net)

Urasenke La Salle, 1900 W. Olney Ave., www.phillytea.org.