I’m right now sitting in school. The sun is shining like crazy and its really nice sitting in the library just chilling.
No I am not cutting class; I have a free study period. And I’ve been sitting with kanji for 20 min and that feels more than enough!
Today is a half day, which basically means we end school at 12(ish?).
My first lesson was Japanese culture, which was awesome like always. It is one of my favorite classes, because I love the teacher and the class itself and the people!

Today we went through tea ceremony. We went down to a little room with tatami floors. There are unbelievingly many rules concerning tea ceremony, and if you don’t do the basic ones at least, you are considered quite ugly and extremely rude. 

1.   When entering the tea ceremony place, you bow to your host, step out of your shoes without touching the ground and step up on the house floor.
The floor is usually 20-40 cm higher than the “normal ground” thus, you have to step UP on it. Then crouch/sit down elegantly and put you shoes so that the toes point towards the door.

You DO NOT bend down.
You DO NOT touch your feet on the “normal ground”.
You DO NOT step up with your shoes on the higher floor.
You DO NOT take of your shoes already pointing towards the door and thinking “that saves both time and effort."

2.  One thing you always have to remember is that on tatami you are only allowed to use 4 steps. So you always have to be aware of how big they are and where on the floor your standing. One more thing concerning the steps is that when you walk into the room, you use your right leg first, walking out your left.
Furthermore, one more very important detail is that you make sure that you are kind of “floating”.
(Lite osm Lucia for er svenskar).

You DO NOT take normal kinds of steps where the heal collides with the ground first.
You DO NOT take more than four steps on each tatami square.

3.   When entering a room, you first have to open a kind of door.
This is also one of the most crucial moments to show people that you know what you are doing.
You sit down on you knees, and make sure that your hands are placed –fingers together- on your lap rather high up. Make sure that your back is as straight as possible.
You bow first with your hand forming a triangle gainst the ground.
Then with you left hand you open the door about 5 cm. There is always a kind of handle thing on the door which you use. Then you take the same hand and put it on the doors end. And then you push the door halfway open. In that way the door should now be open so that it feels natural to do the rest with the right hand. So you switch.
You put the left hand prettily in your hand and push the rest of the way with you right hand.

You DO NOT push it open standing.
You DO NOT push it open using the handle.
You DO NOT use only one hand.
You DO NOT push the door open fast.
You DO NOT cup your hand while opening the door, but keep them straight fingers together.

4. Now that you have opened the door its time to enter the room.
And of course this means even more rules. When entering the room you use you right leg.
You put all your weight on your knees so that you can get your toes in a position that makes it possible for you to rise. Than you move your light leg forward (like the pose when your proposing... or similar anyway) and stand up.

Your Wright leg should now be in front of your left, so you take one relatively big step with your left leg to the “beginnining” of the door. Naturally because of this your next step will be with your Wright foot. That way it will be the Wright foot that is going to take the first step inside the room, on the tatami matt.

When you later leave the room, you use your left leg, so that the left leg is the first that leaves the room.

In this section there are so many DO NOTs so I won’t even bother writing them.
In one hour we went through how to sit and stand up, and walk over the floor. We didn’t even get to the Tea drinking part.. Do you understand how hard this is!?
HAHA.. yeah its really interesting though!

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My lesson is about to start now though, So Ive gotta go!
After this its starbucks time with Erika Sobia and Hopefully Yuika<3
And after that Im meeting up with Liv for two hours. Then its straight to the gym! Im gonna do some leg weights and stuff today, because I did back and stomach yesterday. And I forgot to stretch them out. Which sucks Ill tell you! hahah <3

LOVE
 xoxo Sa