The ship’s gentle rocking made for restful night, and we awakened in Shimizu, not terribly far south of Tokyo. It’s an industrial port city, so we’re really here to see Mt Fuji, the iconic volcano memorialized for centuries in art and culture. Hokusai’s Thirty Six Views of Mt Fuji is probably the most famous, landscape being a departure from typical “Ukiyo-e” subjects (more on that later). The climbing of Mt Fuji is a cultural pilgrimage many locals make every year – recently including a 92-year old (!) woman who has done it every year since she was a child. 

Mt Fuji is about 12,000 feet at the summit, and while technically an active volcano, it has not erupted since 1707. Nonetheless, eruption safety drills are still conducted a couple times a year. Snow covered during the winter, its peak is most often in the clouds, but today…we are lucky.

A short journey through a rather nondescript little city drops us at park of sorts, a pine forest along the seashore. It’s quite beautiful, a shrine here and there, an ancient 300-yr old tree protected by a rustic fence, trails that snake through the sunlight speckled forest floor. We make our way across the pine-needle carpet to the rocky sand and the water’s edge peppered with fishermen. We look left, and…wow – there she is. Looming large and majestic, at a distance but somehow near, it commands the horizon, floating on its cloudy rest. It is no wonder why the peak is revered and a place of legend.

It’s peaceful and quiet here in spite of the many tourists taking pictures (like us). The sound of the water lapping at the sand’s edge and a ceiling of blue sky with just a few wispy clouds makes you want to sit and contemplate your place in the cosmos. I stop, for a moment, and do just that.

I could sit here for hours, but the tour must continue. And so it does, to a little town called Yui. We are going to a “Ukiyo-e” museum, which turns out to have an astonishing collection of Hiroshige prints, one of the most famous 19th-century Japanese artists. Ukiyo-e art originated in the 17th century to express the “floating world” – modern day social conditions and norms. It was sort of a communications medium, as well as often advertisement, done with block prints. My art-teacher mother would love that they have a hands-on printmaking experience (that 330 Yen is about US$2.20).

Utagawa Hiroshige completed two famous series: The Fifty Three Stations of the Tokaido, and One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. Like Hokusai, he challenged the subject norms of Ukiyo-e, as well as the format, orienting some landscapes vertically. What an unexpected treat to see the originals of so many.

Art appreciation must be followed by tea, no? And so it is…as we are graced with a formal tea ceremony in a traditional tea house. Shoes off, of course, as we quietly gather on the tatami mats to watch this ancient ritual. Our guide describes each step as our tea master gracefully performs. Only one person in the room receives the tea she makes; others are served by assistants once the ceremony is complete.

It can take years to become a tea master as each movement has purpose, meaning and a specific way it is done, and not just the actual making and serving of the tea: how to correctly open and close sliding doors, how to walk on tatami, how to enter and exit the tea room, how to bow and to whom and when to do so, how to wash, store and care for the various pieces of equipment, how to ritually clean tea equipment, the correct words to say, how to handle bowls, how to drink tea and eat sweets, and many, many other details. 

The purpose of the tea ceremony? It is a spiritual practice, and as we watched, also clearly an art form; a theatrical performance of sorts. It aims to cultivate harmony (a key principle in Japanese culture), respect, purity, and tranquility…to foster mindfulness and inner peace. 

Even the samurai laid down their swords to partake in the ritual. 

Perhaps we need more tea ceremonies around the world.