well i didn't go to autobacs. one weekend left, i'll have to be sure to go next weekend. yesterday jenn and i saw matrix reloaded. jenn disliked it more than i did, but i definitely didnt think it was as good as the first one. i think they put too much effort into topping the first one, special effects-wise, etc. (plus that whole first scene in zion was pretty unnecessary). there were also some pretty cheezy love bits between neo and trinity that i didn't really want to watch.

jenn's complaint about that, interestingly enough, was that it was totally unbelievable because there was no chemistry between them. this is a concept i was completely oblivious to. am i that much of a guy? i had the impression that this so-called "chemistry" was something one could feel when interacting with someone else (basically, that feeling of just enjoying being around someone where you never feel like youre forcing your smile), but i wasn't aware that it was something apparent to third parties. shrug. i guess i'll just stick to scratching myself through my wife-beater while yelling lewd things to passing women from the second story of my construction site.

...and the software they developed for the scenes like the big fighting scene in the park was amazing, but you could still tell at some points that it was all computer rendered. although if i hadn't read about it first i probly wouldn't have noticed, so it was definitely an achievement. still, i don't consider a movie to be good if all it has is special effects - what i like so much about the first one is the story. so that's what i was most looking forward to in this one. it seemed a bit muddied. though of course i can't really say until we see the last one too.

today my host mom hosted a cha no yu (tea ceremony) for me and two friends, jenn and dia. i invited alia and stephen but stephen couldn't come and alia felt bad this morning, so it turned out she couldn't come either. hehe i accidentally told everyone it was at 1pm so i would meet them at my subway station at 1230. then around 1215 when i was getting ready to leave, my host mom asks me how they're getting here and i said "i'm meeting them at misasagi at 1230" and she goes "oh, where are you going then?" and i said "we're just coming here." eventually we figured out that i had mixed up the time and it was actually at 3, not at 1. the plan was to go eat pizza afterwards too, which was going to be dinner, and we couldnt do that at like 2 or 3. but by that point they were both already on their way. so i went and met them and explained my mistake and we agreed with my host mom that we'd just go out and do stuff and come back at 3. so that we did, and finally the time came for the tea ceremony.

it was very interesting and very cool (though sitting in seiza really started causing pain after like 20-30 mins :). my host mom is very easy-going and so she didn't care that we didn't know all the rules etc, gladly repeated the phrases for us each time we had to say them. the ceremoy itself is really interesting - it seems strict and formal, but it provides a way for the host to go to effort to make the guest feel comfortable. i kept thinking back to the descriptions of cha no yu in Shogun, and thinking of the whole thing in the setting where it was originally developed, namely feudal japan. the original tea ceremony developed by Nobunaga Hideyoshi, was all about glamour and showing off your wealth and elegance. however, Sen No Rikyuu had a different view, and called it wabi, which is the appreciation of the beauty of simplicity and austerity, which he described with this poem:

To those who wait
Only for flowers,
Show them a spring
Of grass amid the snow
In a mountain village.

Rikyuu's tea ceremony emphasized simplicity, using tea bowls made of simple, hand-formed clay, and his tea houses were made with dirt walls, with no decorations other than a plant or piece of calligraphy in the tokonoma. the ceremony we had today seemed close to that line of thinking - the bowls were very simple and for the most part undecorated, and the tokonoma only held a bamboo vase with hydrangeas, a simple blue clay airtight vessel used to age the tea leaves, and the centerpiece, a piece of calligraphy featuring the kanji for shizuka (quiet, peaceful).

i really like japanese poetry, especially when expressed in the form of calligraphy on a scroll, which can be appreciated visually as well as textually. i wonder if i can find some to take home with me that isn't ridiculously expensive.

after the tea ceremony, we asked questions about the things in the tokonoma, etc etc, and she explained everything we wanted to know. i asked how you tie the obi on a kimono, since jenn and dia both have bought some but haven't been able to figure out how to tie it. she undid hers and showed them how to tie it (joking about performing a strip show hehe), and then got a yukata and an obi and and let them both try it themselves. then kenji (host dad) showed us how to fold a kimono, and explained that the reason he knows is that he works at a kimono shop (and i felt bad because it's almost the end of the trip and i didn't know that).

then came pizza, which was really good. it was an italian restaurant, so it was italian-style pizza, which isn't my absolute favorite kind, but i haven't had any since we were in italy last summer so it was good (we ordered a margherite or whatever you call that one kind that most resembles american pizza). it was fun, and dia and jenn seemed to get along well with my host family.

yeah i'm sure you really care this much (the proverbial "you"). so i will proverbially shut up.

Originally posted on LiveJournal. Original post