Chiaki Torisu

Super sweet instructor who was very helpful in teaching us ikebana. She went over the history of the artform then went into a demonstration and finally let us try on our own with guidance. We get to keep the flowers at the end as well (but, not the plate or kenzan pin). The pin would be an additional $20 for you to try arranging yourself at home

We enjoyed this ikebana class.
The instructor was really sweet, she taught us the basics of ikebana, demonstrated how to do a beginner arrangement and then we recreated it ourselves.

While we were happy with the results there are some things that could have been better:
- The class was supposed to be an hour and a half but it lasted less than an hour.
- There were no stools or chairs to sit on, we were standing the whole time
- All the pictures posted give the ilusion of lots of choice in terms of arrangements and flowers, which wasn't the case. I understand it would be expensive to have lots of flowers at hand and that some styles are for more advanced students, but then I think the pictures posted should reflect that.
- After taking a few pictures, we had to take the ikebana apart and our flowers were wrapped to take home. It would be nice to have known beforehand that we would have to purchase our own frog pins online to be able to recreate our arrangement at home.

You could tell it was one of the first classes of our instructor, so i'm sure she'll take our feedback and improve for next classes.

I still think this class has a lot of potential and that people should give ikebana a try!