Ikebana Class

As my last big activity during this wonderful trip to Japan, I decided to go to Ikebana class at the Koomon Culture Center. This is the same place I learned how to wear my kimono, participated in a tea ceremony and did calligraphy. Ikebana is a very beautiful Japanese form of arranging flowers. The idea is to create harmony between all the materials used in the ikebana arrangements. Although there are many schools of ikebana, they are usually based on "less is more" and asymetry.

We were given a overview of the school of ikebana that our master usually follows and then were given some branches and flower stems to make our ikebana. I will not go into the steps as they are intricate and I am not sure I really get them all yet! Fortunately for the four of us that were involved in the class, the master "fixed" our arrangements at the end. I'm proud to say, I had the basic idea and the master only had to tweak mine a little bit.

I look forward to being able to do other simple arrangement in the future. Sayonara.

10/31/2007 : view on map : permalink : add a comment