Duties at the Tea Ceremony Vocational School

This article is written by Seiya H.

This month, I would like to share about the duties I had at the tea ceremony vocational school.

Since my first year, there was a duty called nisshi tōban (journal duty), commonly abbreviated as nittō, which was held about twice a week.

Each day, one or two students from each grade were assigned as the day’s duty members. The task common to all grades was to greet the instructor with a bowl of matcha and serve it when they arrived in class.

The specific duties differed depending on the grade.
For first-year students, the duty started one and a half hours before the morning assembly. We had to come to school early to clean the hallways and stairways. The cleaning took about an hour, and once the third-year (senior) students arrived, they would inspect whether the cleaning had been done properly. Some seniors were very strict, emphasizing that aesthetic awareness is essential in tea ceremony and should be reflected even in daily life. During inspection, they would thoroughly check for dust—even on places like the tops of light switches or air conditioner remotes.

Personally, the most challenging nittō for me was in my second year. Second-year students were responsible for writing down the details of the flowers displayed in the tea room and the Zen phrases (kakemono) written on the hanging scrolls of the day. These were prepared in advance by classmates assigned to another duty, and we had to record them in the journal. Deciphering the Zen phrases written in cursive calligraphy was time-consuming, so I often used a Zen phrase dictionary I had bought beforehand to finish the task quickly.

What was even more difficult was identifying the flowers. The school received fresh flowers weekly from a florist, and I could usually confirm the names through the order sheet or by searching them online. However, sometimes classmates would bring flowers from their dorms or apartments, which made identification extremely hard. Camellias (tsubaki) were especially common as tea flowers, and we were required to write not only the type but also the exact cultivar. To do this, I often looked up the Camellia Encyclopedia in the school library and recorded the correct name.

The third-year students were responsible for checking and correcting all the entries made by the first- and second-year students. They reviewed the second-years’ notes (for example, ensuring flower names were accurate) and then rewrote them neatly into the official journal, which was submitted to the school office.

Looking back, I feel that my experience with the second-year nittō duties deepened my understanding of the scrolls and flowers in the tea room, which in turn helped me enjoy matcha more fully.