Dear guests, dear friends!
I’m addressing you though not knowing what to write. You’re on your ways enjoing summer adventures, full of plans and impressions…but maybe some of you are just meditating, dissolved in the matter of the world. Like me now and here. The boldly loud discussions of seagulls calm my mind, and I silently and surrenderedly wish for people to be happy and not have to steal and not have to kill. The word “just” can mean so much! And how beautiful it is to give thanks!
Have you been to Miyabi in the last few days? If not, you may like to go because we have new tatami in Miyabi. We managed! Maybe you will catch them clean and without scratches before someone pours soy sauce on them or before the light changes their color and it fades. The beauty of a teacup arises with how many guests drink from it, but the beauty of tatami, on the other hand, fades with how many guests sit on them. It’s just the way it is, what works for one, does not work for another. I love the new tatami! It is always a great glory when they are dressed in a fresh mat. The feeling of cleanliness is almost sacred.
For many months, even years, I have been trying to get master Machida from the city of Tsu in Mie Prefecture to come and, like twice in the history of Miyabi, to renew our original tatami, but he has grown old in the meantime and is afraid to go on such a long journey. I found another master, a young and skilled one from the old Asakusa district of Tokyo, and everything seemed very promising, but it was so expensive that I had to give up the project. We ended up buying brand new tatami from a company in Germany that sells tatami made in Asia. Tatami of fixed dimensions. We selected the best quality ones and adapted our rooms to them. I am very happy. Such a beauty to have new tatami!
I was surprised that the tatami market has already adapted to our needs as Europeans. The best-selling tatami mats are the 200×90 cm tatami mats, because they fit into beds. Few people make entire tatami rooms, and moreover, no one even thinks that an architect would adapt the the house to the dimensions of clasical tatami, as has been the case since ancient times in Japan. So it is no longer the case that four and a half tatami always measure 270×270 cm, six tatami 270×360 cm and that it only gets a little bigger or smaller if tatami are used for a house in Kyoto or Tokyo. Of course, the Tokyo ones are smaller because there is less space for everything in Tokyo.
Yes, Miyabi has new tatami. I think it is worthy to enjoy the elegant Miyabi summer kaiseki menu sitting on those tatami mats full of igusa grass frangrance. I warmly recommend. Or you may have some sushi, it’s a light meal and tastes even better in the summer time. I have to tell Miyabi that the chefs should prepare also the exotic fruit and flower rolls that I designed for the Utsukushii Utsushi Sushi Festival. Sushi transformed into beauty.
So let us see the beauty around us, celebrate summer and give thanks that it is and that we are. And let us do so even when the heat rises to our heads. I wish you all the best,
Your Miyabi Darja
