Author Archives: Tiffany Sun

The day of the 22nd started without trouble. All of us, piled into the Piece Hostel lobby at 10:15am, keycards collected without issue, with a shuttle waiting to take us to the airport: everything was just as planned. One minor … Continue reading →

Yesterday we came full circle, but today was more like an end. It was a completely free day, which I’m very thankful for. My host family booked Shinkansen tickets back at 3:00PM, so I went to their hotel, Hotel Monterey, at … Continue reading →

On our final day of the formal program (we have one full day left that’s completely free), we went full circle, visiting Kei-san to give him the answers to our koan and to do zazen again. Everything was so familiar, … Continue reading →

Tensions were running high yesterday as we gathered at Terminal Kyoto at 1:55PM. We had about 3-4 hours of practice with Mitsue-san, our translator, before the actual presentation. For some reason, I kept calling it a performance; I still don’t … Continue reading →

We called taxis today at 9:30am to get to Ohtsuki Kokun-sensei’s residence. He is an artisan mask maker, and as we walked to the second floor studio, we could see a large variety of Noh, kyogen, and okina masks that … Continue reading →

At 9:25am, we lined up at the hostel lobby in order to walk to a shrine near Teramachi. There, we met Amae Derek-sensei, who would be talking to us about the way of tea, otherwise known as te mae, a … Continue reading →

Today was the great day of visiting the Takabayashi Family, which is of the Kita school. While most of the Kita school resides in Tokyo, the Takabayashi Family resides in Kyoto. They have a close sense of family, and are … Continue reading →

We were blessed with some minor overnight snow today! We met at around 9:45am at the hostel lobby and took the subway to Higashiyama, which was near the Kanze Noh theater. Upon leaving the subway, we were greeted with this … Continue reading →