By the teahouse at the Japanese Gardens.
Photos were taken at the Japanese Gardens in Portland, Oregon
Shitamoe, he said, shoots under snow. It was a nod to the
hope of spring returning, to the ancestor Rikyu's simple tea, and to the
new life, unbelievably, slumbering inside my older
sister............The only sounds in the room were like breath: the
soughing of the boiling water, the whisper of the tea whisk in the bowl.
"When
he wrote to the Meiji court, he said the aim of tea was that people
face one another as equals. Just as you said, he wanted a way for
merchant and samurai, commoner and artisan, Kyoto native and Satsuma
man," she said, nodding here to Advisor Kato, "to set those differences
aside and meet each other in the teahouse as equals, as fellow men"-
inspired, she snatched at Kato's rhetoric - "under the Emperor, citizens
of a new Japan."
Happy Friday, dear friends!
Happy Valentine's Day tomorrow!