Have you held a chaji? You'd say, "No, because I’m not in Japan" or "I wish I could but I can’t because I don’t have a tea room, a tea garden or enough utensils." Well, I don't either. I'm living in a studio apartment in New York City. I don't have a garden, even an extra room. But I hold a chaji at least once a month. It is fun to use your imagination creatively to utilize what you have into tea utensils. If you study chanoyu and you like it, I would like to share the pleasure of a chaji with you. Let me introduce how to hold a chaji with a limited condition.

First let me introduce you my tea room.
(Click pictures to get larger images and recipes.)
I happened to get 3 tatami mats. So I built a 3-tatami koma tea room. My apartment has windows on the north side only. As pictures shown, I made a tea room at the north east corner of my apartment. At this corner, there is a column as you can see one in every apartment. I used it to make a tokonoma (alcove). I put a similar looking column at the opposite side of the alcove. I used an east side wall and fixed shoji screens as three other walls of the tea room with leaving 2 screens movable at the southwest corner and the southeast corner; southwest door is sadoguchi (entrance for the host) and the other is an entrance for guests (they can either crawl in or walk in). This shoji screen tea room gives you a dimly lighted cozy atmosphere.
Now, let me show you how I give a chaji with the one I had in August as an example.
The guests are waiting on a couch and I greet with them. (mukaetsuke)
The guests go in to the tea room and look at a scroll and a brazier. I go in to the tea room and greet with the guests one by one. Since the brazier I have is an electric one, there is no sumi demae (charcoal procedure).
I bring the first plate. (The menu for this chaji was white steamed rice, clear soup with egg tofu and somen (skinny noodle) and mukozuke was yamafugu (konnyaku) sashimi.)
After a while, I bring sake in. Since I don't have shuhai, I brought several small sake cups and let them choose they like.
I go in the room and ask them the second for both rice and soup. Since I don't have a hanki (self service rice bowl with a lid), I give the 2nd rice from the kitchen.
I skip Nimono wan because I don't have appropriate containers. I bring sake and serve it, then leave the sake container for them to help themselves.
I bring broiled fish individually. (It was Spanish mackerel marinated in yuzu (Japanese citrus) and soy sauce.)
When I leave I tell them I'd have my meal in the kitchen. The first guest asked me if I could join them so I accepted and joined them. (I always join my guests.)
After we finish, I take my tray away as well as their fish plates and the sake container. I bring kozuimono in. I take kozuimono cups away after they finish since my kozuimono cups do not have lids.
I bring hassun and sake for chidori. (Sea food was fish paste and mountain food was oshitashi of myoga and watercress.) Normally, the host puts hassun food on the inside of the lid of kozuimono. I put them on the mukozuke plate instead.
After chidori, I bring yuto. As a yuto, I used a water pitcher I made. I brought a renge (Chinese spoon) and pickles.
Once the guests finish their food, they put down their chopsticks loudly. Then I take everything away.
I bring in sweets for thick tea.
When they finish sweets, they leave the room for nakadachi (intermission). I change the hanging scroll to flowers at the alcove and prepare utensils for koicha.
I greet with guests again at my couch and start koicha.
Since there is no sumi demae, I make thin tea as tsuzuki usucha. (I skipped tobacco tray and pillows.) I had a thin tea as the first guest asked me to have it on this day.
After the thin tea finishes, I greet with guests to express our feelings about the chaji and farewell.
It is a good idea to make a record book (kaiki) with some pictures of everyone together. Later I send both kaiki and pictures to the guests.
Like myself, if you don't have anyone who can help you in the kitchen or for mizuya, you need to prepare food well enough on the previous day in order to serve meals with a right timing.

Needless to say, you can’t use just anything for a tea ceremony. You have to know which is appropriate and which is not. In order to get that sense, you have to learn chanoyu intensively, see lots of utensils and study an authentic way of chaji. Once you learned the authentic way of chaji, it is not necessary to stick with it if the circumstance does not allow it and you can modify it as necessary. Chanoyu is actually flexible. Chaji is a hospitality. The most important thing is that it's based on how you want to treat your guests and share the time with them. I hope you can find the joy of chaji.

I'd like to express my thankfulness to both Messrs. Kazuyo Asano and Hiromi Iwatani for their cooperation.

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