茶道/tea ceremony

茶道
Originally uploaded by nitaspitas.

The women's group and college group at my church had a tea ceremony after service today. It was nice because it wasn't super formal, but everyone still did all the parts of the tea ceremony. They explained everything to me (half in English, half in Japanese ^^;), and then they let me try it. There are so many little things involved, but it was fun to whisk the tea ^_^ You're supposed to whisk like you're writing "M" in the tea really really fast, and then at the end, write a の to get the powder off the sides of the cup. They packed up the leftover snacks for me to take home, but I don't think they meant for me to eat them all right when I got back... I've been slowly working my way through them while I was uploading pictures and typing this, though...

Also, I actually understood parts of the main service today. It's interesting to see how my listening and reading comprehension improve each month because the youth pastor (who is way easier to understand than the head pastor) does a sermon once a month, and I can understand more of the actual sermon each time. They also write a summary of the sermon in the program every week, and surprisingly, I was able to read and understand the topic without help. He also likes to compare the Japanese translation of the Biblical text to the English translation, which makes things easier for me. It's still practically impossible for me to understand more than the title and pick out words I know when the head pastor speaks, though...