Enjoying the Incense-Smelling Ceremony

If you're familiar with the art of ceremonial teamaking, how about attending a traditional incense-smelling ceremony? “Enjoying the Incense-Smelling Ceremony” is a public lecture course offered at Meiji University where you can participate in a workshop with a skilled teacher's guidance. As I was taught the techniques yesterday by my son who attended the course for a year, I smelled the fragrant, heated wood for the first time in my life. In Kumi-ko, a variation of the ceremony, you can guess which scent is the same as the other, that is, two of the same scents out of five. It was very impressive because it was also the first time for me to describe the smell itself in words to distinguish one from another, like "Oh, it reminds me of the heat of the summer a long time ago..." or "Ugh, how acrid is this?" You need some special tools for the ceremony, but it's worth "smelling" it!