Elegant Tea Ceremony at Warakuan Teahouse in Tokyo

My son and I enjoyed the Formal Instruction by a Certified Tea Ceremony Expert and his wife speaking in Japanese and their older daughter translating for us. We were greeted at their gate, led to their front business door and switched from our street shoes to their special sandals and directed into an informal Japanese meeting room with a tatami mat and small floor table where we put on their special one-toed white socks and then their sandals. We then went over several sheets of their English/Japanese explanations of each of the steps of the tea ceremony explaining words that are spoken and responses that are given. There is a lot of symbolism and purpose for each movement throughout the ceremony; specific movement and placement of the handheld fans, preparation with tea scoop and whipping utensils, and finally the making of the teas themselves. The ancient tea bowls used are passed down in the family through generations. The Tea Master picks a theme for each ceremony and chooses three items to depict that theme in a special section of the room (rooms can vary in size and roof height--commonly low ceilings required scooting into the room on your knees on the tatami mats and scooting around to the themed wall) and then you scoot to your tea position lifting yourself with the flat part of your fisted hand and then sitting with your lower legs under you bottom. The tea is brewed over a small pot of special wood in the corner of the room. When completed we exited and reviewed the ceremony back in the community room we started in and they answered our questions as best as they could with their daughter's translation. It was a very personal experience.