Someone recently gave me a set of six Japanese tea cups, together with a bunch of japanese tea--it was their mother's, and she recently passed away. She was Japanese, and the tea is all Japanese (other than some darjeeling). Although I've been drinking chinese teas for most of the past two years, I feel this is a sign for me to start drinking a bit more japanese tea. So I've started with what I think is a bancha and what I know to be sencha. The cups, though, are one of the highlights of this unexpected tea windfall for me. I just wish I could read the calligraphy. But while I can read some Chinese, I can't figure Japanese out. And I can't read calligraphy anyway. If anyone could help me, I'd be most appreciative. All cups have the same characters: four relatively large ones and three small ones. I think the four large ones appear to be kanji, and the other possibly hiragana/kanji mixed. From my basic Chinese, I can tell that the first character means "five", but the rest I am not sure about. I have some fuzzy pictures, but my camera broke and I had to take these with my webcam.
If anyone has any idea how to at least pronounce this, that'd be great. If not, I will just enjoy them for what they are.
Cha Bing