I've been throwing this party since the year of the dragon, and each year, after it is over, I'm left wondering how I can make it more manageable. I refuse to give up gong fu cha as the centerpiece, so I usually end up trying to simplify it by inviting fewer people.

This year, my year, the year of the boar, I really wanted to celebrate. But two of the party regulars have moved away and another now have an infant. That left room to invite different people, but they would not be familiar with the tea. I love making tea gong fu style for people who haven't had it, but sometimes it's just too different. This, coupled with the fact that my apartment lacks furniture for sitting, can be too much. The result: I end up doing a lot of work and guests are uncomfortable.

Still, I wanted to invite a bunch of new people. To add a more contemplative piece, I also decided to make matcha for a few very close friends on the day before the bigger party. This would be an abbreviated and markedly social chakai, and a better activity for marking the passing of something. Also, I invited people who couldn't make it to the larger party to drop by whenever they could for bowl of matcha and a sweet and some pu-er or high-mountain oolong.

To mark the special year, I ordered a bunch of omogashi from our resident Kyoto-trained sweet maker. We negotiated something suitable for the season and also for many people who have never had omogashi. She made a kintan from Tsukune-imo (a type of Japanese yam) and named the sweet Haramachi kusa, "Wanting to Bloom." It was a white snowball from the outside and pink on inside.

I took off Friday and Monday from work. I cleaned all day Friday and picked up Tom from the airport. He'd brought tea and a little pig for the gong fu set from his recent trip to Shanghai. He also brought a garish pig-in-a-bucket-of-gold-coins sign with big red tassles swinging to and fro and edges glinting with glitter. I hung it on the front door.

Saturday morning I had to prepare all the gear for the chakai. The sweets arrived and Mary and Andrew soon after. It was nice to make tea in the morning light and to hear the soft conversation of my good friends. Together we drank enough tea to empty half of the natsume.

With the house clean and all the gear out, preparing for Sunday was a breeze. Andrew and I picked a room-temperature sake we like, Hatsumago, to drink with the pu-er that night and picked up some good quality rice crackers to help people keep their tummies calm. I also made wasabi grapes.

A couple of people trickled in in the late afternoon and that was the best it got. Later, a group arrived at once and the place filled up. As part of this year's strategy to help keep things manageable, I invited a friend I know through chado to also make tea. He arrived at the same time as the others and things were hectic trying to get him set up and also tend to new visitors. I mistakenly connected the kettle he was using to the dimmer switchon my lamp, which caused the fuse in the dimmer to blow and take out the light. It was humorous thing, the lights going out and the chorus of surprise, but solving and repairing that problem took a little bit of time and cord stringing.

I forget that my house can be kind of a shocker if you've never seen it. I have all my old furniture from Korea and have basically gotten rid of everything else except the bookshelves and all the books. The living room is more akin to an old asian scholar's room than a American living room, and people comment on it. I heard, Is your place always set up like this? And, Do you just have a passion for Asian things? For some reason, I found both questions awkward to answer. Mostly this is because I think the questions originate from simple judgments and I feel like I have to address the judgments instead of taking the questions at face value. The truth probably lies more with the vulnerability I feel at being the center of attention than anything else. A confident person would take the questions as opportunities to tell the interesting things about themselves.

In the end, two people who had RSVP'd didn't show and one group had to leave soon after the party started. Four stayed late and drank much tea and two bottles of sake. But after it was over, there I was wondering how I could make it work better next year.

After thinking about it for a week, I think next year I'll sit home all day with the water boiling and tell people to drop by at their leisure. That is more true to the way I was treated to tea with Mrs. Chung and her acquaintances and that is what felt the best of this past weekend.

In other news, the archive section of UFS has been revamped and updated. It's now possible to locate entries from the past couple of years without clicking backward one by one. The archives are still a work in progress, as they require some level of programming that I have to outsource. But we're almost there. It'll be cool when it's done.