Doctor touts benefits of drinking green tea

A Connecticut doctor delivered a scientific presentation titled "Green Tea as Medicine to Fight Cancer" to attendees of the International Union Against Cancer (UICC) quadrennial World Cancer Congress.

—Mellow Monk

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Junk food that's good for you

Men's Health has a list of six formerly forbidden snack foods that are actually good for you.

—Mellow Monk

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Office dog

This shouldn't surprise fans of doggies, but a dog in the workplace can relieve stress. Except for those folks who are afraid of dogs. But then, they need to get over that fear, anyway, right?

—Mellow Monk

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Nita and Rob's photos

Nita Winter and Rob Badger are a husband-and-wife photographer team who take pictures of a wide range of subjects, from children (see below), weddings, and wildflowers to pets and nature scenes. Very nice stuff to look at.

—Mellow Monk

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How music makes us mellow

Music hath charms to sooth the savage beast, and it also makes us mellow on a neurochemical level.

—Mellow Monk

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Ease the pain with mint oil

It's been a folk remedy for thousands of years, but mint oil really works: Not only does its cooling effect feel good, but it actually has anti-inflammatory properties.

—Mellow Monk

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Kickstart the ol' memory with "previously seen on..."

Last night, I watched the series finale of HBO's Deadwood, a truly well-done show. I like that show so much, if they made Deadwood action figures, I'd buy the Al Swearengen figure and maybe the Trixie figure, as long as manufacturer didn't botch the likeness too much.

Anyway, Deadwood, like most HBO series, has a very long "previously seen on" segment. When I was a kid, I always found the previous episode summary annoying. I was anxious for the show to start. "Who needs the summary, anyway?" I thought.

Well now, a few decades later, I can answer my own rhetorical question: I need the summary. Particularly with a show with plot twists and conspiracies as complex as Deadwood, I found the summary not just convenient but almost essential—especially if I wanted to avoid missing key lines of dialog while attempting to remember and rehash previous developments with the wife.

So, what once was an annoyance is now a necessity. Compared to when I was younger, my attitude toward green tea has undergone a similarly dramatic change. But then, with age comes wisdom, no?

I'm sure Al Swearengen would agree.

—Mellow Monk

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Mellow wallpaper

For your computer's desktop: high-resolution wallpaper images of mellow scenery. The site has a lot of top-quality images to choose from. The site is not letting me display any of the images in this posting, but take my word for it: These images are very cool.

—Mellow Monk

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How do you keep them on the farm when they've seen Tokyo?

The Economist seems to be saying that one solution to the slow depopulation of Japan's countryside can be found in towns like Ogama, on the Noto Peninsula. There, the small handful of remaining farmers decided to pull up stakes, move to the next town, and turn their valley into a giant landfill. It's a sad story, really.

(Back in March, the English-language edition of the Asahi newspaper ran a story about the same town.)

At any rate, we're all fortunate that Koji Nagata, our primary green tea supplier, decided to stay on his father's farm. Thanks to that fateful decision, the world has Mellow Monk green tea.

Hmm... Now why do you suppose it's so hard to keep young people on the farm nowadays?


—Mellow Monk

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Tea plantation wallpaper

From the National Geographic website comes an awesome high-resolution photo of an old-school tea plantation. Click on the photo to get the full-sized version.

The Nagata's tea farm doesn't look quite like this. Not only is it more modern, but the owners, the Nagatas, actually do all the work themselves. In addition, the tea farm is their principal means of making a living.

—Mellow Monk

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The dangers of nonstick frying pans

Now here's a scary story about Teflon-coated frying pans:

In just two or three minutes of preheating, your pan will give off fumes that can make you sick. Each time you use medium to high heat on an empty pan, the surface on Teflon-coated and other nonstick cookware breaks apart and emits a toxic chemical called perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA.

If you have a pet bird, you should be especially careful about these frying pans. As suggested by the article's title ("Canaries in the Kitchen"), your feathered friend is much more susceptible to the toxic effects than us humans are.

—Mellow Monk

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Outdoor movies at Kumamoto Castle

As art of the Kumamoto Castle Summer Festival—held this week—organizers showed movies on a large outdoor screen with the castle in the background.

This tradition dates back to the days of un-air-conditioned movie theaters, where it was too hot in the summer to sit through a film. (In contrast, last summer I was in a new movie theater in Kumamoto City, and it was just like a modern American theater with stadium seating. And the seating was assigned!)

The local newspaper reports more than a few moviegoers enjoying a beer bought at one of the outdoor stalls selling food and liquid refreshments. Ah, the good life.



The perfect venue for watching an old samurai movie.

—Mellow Monk

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Air guitar in Japan

Here's a story that will answer a question that's on a lot of people's minds: Do the Japanese have their own air guitar contest? They do indeed.

Happy Friday!



And to think that when she was young, her parents pressured her to play the air violin.


—Mellow Monk

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Health problems ground Japan's space tourist

Japanese entrepreneur Daisuke Enomoto, who was all set to hand over a bundle of money for a ride to the International Space Station, has been grounded after failing his health exam.

Many Japanese may be breathing a sign of relief at Enomoto's grounding, as he had been planning to dress as his favorie anime character while aboard the ISS. It's not known what his likely replacement, Iranian-born businesswoman Anousheh Ansari, plans to dress as.

If it's not too late already, a Trekkie has got to get into space before we—I mean they—get too old.



At least he can tell his grandkids about the time he almost made it into space.


—Mellow Monk

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Tea, the healthy way to hydrate

A blog reader in San Antonio sends in this link about a paper just published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The paper dispels the myth that tea is dehydrating and extols the many health benefits of tea.



English tea and milk is as common as coffee and cream, but if you want to flavor your green tea, try a piece of orange peel, a drop of vanilla extract, honey, lemon juice ... the sky's the limit!

—Mellow Monk

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Health secrets of the world's oldest man

Celebrating his 115th birthday in Isabela, Puerto Rico, the world's oldest man shared his health secrets: don't drink to excess, and if you smoke, be sure to quit by the time you're 90.



"Wait a second. Don't take the picture until I'm finished brushing my ... Hey!"


—Mellow Monk

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Whales getting struck in busy Japanese shipping lanes

Like deer getting hit by cars while trying to cross a busy highway, more whales are colliding with ships in the world's crowded shipping lanes. In Japan, such incidents are especially on the rise around the island of Kyushu:

Collisions between whales and ships have become a fact of life in areas around Japan's main southwest island of Kyushu as well as the sea that separates South Korea and Kyushu, with about a dozen incidents reported in the past two and a half years.

"You look like nice people, so I'll let you off with just a warning this time. But next time, I might not be in such a good mood."


—Mellow Monk

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Remembering a dam trouble-maker

Tomoyuki Murohara died in 1970 after having spent the last 20 years of his life unsuccessfully fighting the Japanese government's plan to build a dam that eventually flooded the valley where he forebears had lived for generations.



The Shimouke Dam today.


His struggle—an act of defiance that would have been unthinkable to previous generations—began in 1958 and attracted national attention. He became positively famous in 1959 when he constructed "Beehive Castle" (Hachinosu-Jo), as someone dubbed the home-made observation post he built to protest and watch over the government's pre-construction prep work. The post was occupied 27/7 by Mr. Murohara and his followers.



"Beehive Castle," built in Oguni Town to protest the construction of the Shimouke Dam.


In 1965, however, his legal challenge against the government was thrown out and construction of the Shimouke Dam began, although Mr. Murohara, feisty guy that he was, kept fighting right up until the day he died.

(If you drive through the small towns near the dam, located on border betwee Kumamoto and Oita Prefectures, you can still see the occasional "Oppose the Dam" sign.)

This past Sunday, in Oguni Town (about half an hour from where Mellow Monk tea is grown in Aso City), relatives of Mr. Murohara, including his brother (83) and eldest son (65), unveiled a memorial to the local hero. The site is near the now-flooded valley Mr. Murohara struggled to preserve.



The Murohara memorial being unveiled on Sunday near the dam.


In attendance was the former dam project manager, Ken Soejima, who said he showed up partly to "atone for his sins."

—Mellow Monk

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A stress-free back to school

Here are the ABCs of a stress-free back to school—not just for kids, but for parents, too. For instance, here are hints A, B, and C:

• Attend open house: It's an excellent time for kids to meet their teachers, see their classroom, try out their lockers and practice walking the hallways to their classes.
  
• Brain teasers: These games are a great way to get the brain started and put kids in a learning mode.
  
• Calendars: Make a family calendar before a month begins. Indicate where and when each person needs to be and who is responsible for transportation. Resolve conflicts ahead of time.
  

—Mellow Monk

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Thermogenic foods for losing weight

A guide to thermogenic foods—foods that speed up your metabolism, making it easier to lose weight.

—Mellow Monk

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The killer frying pan

We all love our non-stick Teflon-coated frying pans, but recent studies by DuPont, the maker of Teflon, are showing that preheating these pans causes them to emit a toxic chemical called perfluorooctanoic (PFOA).

It's so bad that DuPont plans to phase out any PFOA-emitting products by 2015.

And if you've got a pet bird, you'd better be extra careful:

Avian veterinarians have know for decades that Teflon offgases are a leading cause of death among birds, and estimated that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of birds are killed each year.

—Mellow Monk

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Baby steps for coping with stress

This article makes an important point: Although reducing stress in your life requires major changes in your thinking, you still have to start with baby steps, meaning setting a realistic goal (for instance, enrolling in a yoga class) and then taking small steps toward that goal, such as first calling around to see what's available, then visiting a couple of possible locations the next week.

—Mellow Monk

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Sing!

From London, a story about singing as stress relief:

Professionally trained singer Karin Hochapfel runs stress-busting classes for City highfliers that use a mixture of yoga, Alexander Technique and breathing exercises to relieve tension -- all used by singers to warm up before they perform.

Singing—it's not just for the shower any more.

—Mellow Monk

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Disappearing America

Photographer David Plowden has published a book of photos entitled Disappearing America, featuring scenes of small-town Americana in the '60s and '70s.



This may look like a scene from Casablanca, but it's actually the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad in Scranton, PA, 1964.


—Mellow Monk

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Practice kitchen yoga to survive arsenic hour

Kitchen yoga is a technique for getting through the "arsenic hour," which is

that frazzled window of time after work and before dinner when the kids are cranky, the adults are exhausted, and everyone's bite-your-head-off ravenous.

The first step, upon getting home in the evening, is to

change into comfy clothes, kick off my shoes (or wear wool clogs if it's cold), drink a glass of water, and put on soothing music.

That sounds like good advice to follow every evening, whether you're going to be cooking or not. In other words, try to make it a habit to change into relaxing clothes as soon as you get home. Make relaxation priority number one.

—Mellow Monk

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Maple syrup: another fad diet

Would you believe me if I told you that you could detox and lose weight by drinking nothing but maple syrup for 10 days?

You wouldn't it? Well, I wouldn't, either. What's next, the hot fudge sundae diet?

Besides, you'd be better off drinking green tea to lose weight.

—Mellow Monk

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The brain-shrinking monster

Stress can shrink your brain:

Essentially, the researchers say, stress can addle your mind and make you older. But there's good news too: Exercise can make a huge difference. And, in the case of the brain at least, time might heal the wounds caused by stress.

Exercise is great, of course, but there's another way to beat stress: Take a tea break. Sounds good, doesn't it.

In fact, I think I'll have some tea right now.



This is your brain on stress. Any questions?

—Mellow Monk

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Fighting jet lag with science

The high-tech way to avoid jet lag:

[The method] involves resetting your body clock with small doses of the hormone melatonin for three days before flight time — combined with going to bed an hour earlier each day — and then taking in bright light, natural or artificial, after arriving [at your destination].

However, an "alertness consultant" (yes, that's an actual job title) has a low-tech solution: napping.

“When I was at NASA, we did a study involving 26-minute naps and we found they boosted performance by 34 percent and alertness by 54 percent. Naps of less than a half-hour work."

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Big-time stress in big-city Japan

This just in from Japan:

Statistics indicate that 60 per cent of workers suffer from “high anxiety” and that 65 per cent of companies report soaring levels of mental illness.

That's life in the big city, eh?

Also notice that the article's content does not live up to the sensationalistic headline.

The article also fails to point out that consumption of loose-leaf green tea in Japan is trending downward as more and more of those young, busy people opt for bottled, ready-to-drink green tea. A tea break used to mean a few quiet minutes spent preparing and enjoying a hot cup of relaxing, soothing tea. Now it means chugging a bottle of ready-to-drink tea on a crowded subway train while listening to an MP3 player and playing with a handheld video game. No wonder people are stressed.

—Mellow Monk

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Grumpy = smart?

Bah, humbug to the square root of pi: A study suggests that among folks over 60, grumpiness and intelligence may go hand-in-hand, whereas intelligent young people tend to be friendly and cheery.

—Mellow Monk

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Air fresheners and lung damage

Want to give your room that fresh, clean smell? You might want to consider simply opening a window instead of using an air freshener containing 1,4-dichlorobenzene:

For years, scientists have suspected that a chemical in many household deodorizing products may cause short-term lung problems — and possibly worse. Now it appears that those concerns are probably valid. In a study published this month, scientists at the National Institutes of Health say they found that people with relatively high blood concentrations of the substance — 1,4-dichlorobenzene, an organic chemical — show signs of slightly reduced lung function. The chemical is also in mothballs, tobacco smoke and toilet deodorizers.

You can read the full study here.

—Mellow Monk

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In praise of night bathing

Now, I'm not one of those guys who thinks anything that foreigners do differently than Americans has to be because their way is better. For instance, the Swedes eat a fermented herring—read "rotten fish"—called surströmming, which apparently has a foulness of odor resembling what you'd experience in a sewage line.

There are many other foreign customs I don't buy in to. I can't believe that, upon being offered the choice between the kings of American sports—baseball and football—many more foreign nations picked baseball over football. If their cultures weren't strange in some crucial way, they would have picked football, correct?

But to get back to the topic at hand, there is one Japanese custom you might like to test drive for a couple of months: bathing at night, instead of in the morning.

I personlly converted to showering and bathing at night, although I'm not one hundred percent faithful. Bathing at night helps me relax and wind down at the end of a hectic day, but sometimes I'm just too lazy in the evening to even consider dragging myself out of my chair. Or it's because showering at night would throw off my DVD-viewing plans for the evening.

But I think you'll find that bathing in the evening helps relax tense muscles, which will put you in better spirits and help you fall asleep quickly at bedtime. Doesn't it sound relaxing just reading about it? So give it a try—what are you waiting for (besides the sun to go down)?

—Mellow Monk

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Ghosts, demons, and spirits

Here is an article that tells everything you've always wanted to know about "Ghosts, Demons and Spirits in Japanese Lore."



A scene from the classic samurai-era ghost story "The Ghost with Foul-Smelling Breath." Just kidding. It's actually from "Bancho Sarayashiki" (a.k.a. House of Plates, which is not to be confused with the House of Pilates).

—Mellow Monk