A doctoral candidate of the University of Hawaii is completing her thesis on the effects non-Japanese disciples have on the teachers of the Ways, and vice versa. Part of her study was conducted at Kyoto's Urasenke, Japan's most renowned school of chado and one that admits a great many foreigners. There, her most revealing finding has been the reasons students cite for undertaking the Way of tea with a particular master. Temporary non-Japanese students, she found, almost exclusively say they were drawn to a teacher because of his skill or reputation. Almost equally as exclusively, though, she discovered that native Japanese students gave another reason for their attraction to a specific master. It was, they said, because they saw something in the master's character that they wished to develop in their own. They were drawn to his teaching of the Way because they sensed a presence, an attitude, that transcended technique. It is in that master's presence that lies the real worth of the Ways as they have been practiced and taught in Japan for centuries, a value that endures beyond the changes in fashion and social convention. It is the reason why the various Do continue to captivate followers today, taking a path that leads one from the mastery of the Ways, to the mastery of oneself.