In many ways, geisha are living embodiments of Japanese traditional culture: each one is well versed in traditional dancing, singing, musical instruments and occasionally other arts such as tea ceremony and ikebana (flower arrangement).

BBC: Kyoto's living art of the geisha

This spring the Park Avenue Armory will be the site of his artistic expedition to Mars, complete with a biology lab for Martian plant cultivation. (Sachs borrowed the technology from marijuana growers.) And this month his show "Work" opens at New York's Sperone Westwater gallery, featuring pieces like a Japanese tea ceremony and a version of Roy Lichtenstein's razor-blade painting "Duridium, " made here out of screws.

WSJ: Tom Sachs

From there his route to power was typical of the times: freedom rallies, imprisonment by the British authorities, release, tea with the governor, a constitutional conference and a flattering independence ceremony conducted by a British royal.

ECONOMIST: Hastings Banda

His passion was tea bowls the "active, " intimately handled objects of a ceremony that, imported from China, had been turned by its first Japanese grandmaster, Sen No Rikyu, into a cultural rite linked to Zen Buddhism.

CNN: ASIANOW - TIME Asia | The Subtle Magic of Koetsu

After a hectic day of media interviews, tea-drinking and chatting with the "old boys", they took part in the formal closure ceremony, which included a fly-by and drill display.

BBC: NEWS | UK | Sad salute to war command centre