Ikebana

We had our ikebana midterm yesterday. It was pretty intense. A classroom of students intently arranging flowers for half an hour, and then another half an hour waiting in the locker room while the creations were graded. I hope everyone is glad to know I got an A in flower arranging.

The class isn't quite as great as I had hoped, but it's helpful in a way. I like the ideas behind showing off the quirky natural beauty of a flower, but the rules are so rigid that it makes it hard to make something actually beautiful. Definitely no artistic license here.

The way the class goes generally is we sit in the classroom, everyone with a dish-like container for the flowers, a kenzan, or lethal thing made of spikes to impale flower stems on, and a bundle of flowers each. We usually learn a slightly different form every week, which involves a lot of diagrams written on the blackboard and whatnot. The teacher makes an arrangement as we follow along, basically. Then we hang out while he and the assistant teachers go around and correct our arrangements.