Kodo Utensils – Ko Dou Gu

香道具

Shino-Ryu (Shino School)

Kodo equipment in itself is a huge subject. Different schools use different equipment and use this equipment in somewhat different arrangement and display.  My knowledge may be slightly skewed to particular branching of these schools. I will try to cover as much as possible, but I do not expect it to be anything like a complete presentation of the subject.  More or less I want to convey a general idea of the equipment that is used.

柱空入 Taki gara ire - Silver Bowl - Shino Style
火道具建 Hi dogu tate - Silver Vase - Shino Style

灰押 Haiosae - Ash press
羽(羽箒） Habouki – Feather
木香箸 Kikoubashi - Incense chopsticks (wood)
銀葉挟 Ginyou basami - Mica Tongs
香匙 Kou saji - Incense spoon
香筋 Kyouji - metal chopsticks (Shino)

乱箱 Midare bako - Random box
帛紗 Fukusa - Silk Cloth (underneath koro)
地敷 Jishiki - Ground cover (under box)

 

火取火箸 Hitori hibashi - Incense Censer Chopsticks
火取香炉 Hitori-gouro - Incense Censer

香炭団 Kou Tadon - Kodo charcoal
聞香炉 Kiki-gouro

 

These are a few of the basic items, there are many more and like I said varying with the school and teacher. This should give you a good idea of the general equipment.

 

Canadian Retailers

For those of you living in Canada, especially Montreal and Toronto we have two retailers available for you at this time, one is Snow Lion in Toronto and the other is Association Zen de Montreal.  You can find their information on our retailer page at http://www.oller.net/retail.htm

Theodore at Snow Lion says he will ship anywhere in Canada but there is no incense on his webpage so you will have to call or email him to make an order I don’t believe Zen de Montreal ships, so it may just be for those of you living in Montreal.

We are working to add more Canadian retailers so hopefully you will see the list grow.

Tobiume on the Way

For those who have been waiting it shouldn’t be long.
It will take some time to show up on the retailers webpage's,
but I expect less than 30 days from now.

The planned packaging is 18 gram boxes at a retail price of $10.00

A large 150 gram box should retail around $70.00

We expect most of the retailers will carry Tobiume. At this time the following stores have made orders:

Koshi (Japan Town) San Francisco http://www.japanincense.com/
Incense Warehouse http://www.incensewarehouse.com/
Essence of the Ages http://www.essenceoftheages.com/
Sensia http://www.sensia.com/

I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

David Oller

Product & Freshness Guarantee

It’s important to remember that Authentic Baieido products distributed through authorized retailers carry a freshness guarantee from Esoterics LLC. Look for this certificate on their website.

 

If you find the retailer on our “Retailer Page” http://www.oller.net/retail.htm they are “Quality Assured” retailers, whether or not they have the certificate on their website.

Price Increases

Well, we have been hoping the dollar would gain some strength for the last three months. We have seen our prices increase around 30-35% without raising our prices at the retail level. At the same time shipping costs have been increasing despite the fact the shippers costs are down.

I realize this is a terrible time, but it now seems unavoidable, we are simply going to have to raise prices.  The only thing I can suggest for all of us is to consider taking advantage of the larger quantity packaging which should be more than enough to offset the price increases.

I will promise you that should we see the dollar improve we will again lower prices.

David Oller
Esoterics LLC
Baieido USA