Green tea and memory

From the BBC, via Kazakhstan (!), comes an article on how drinking green tea can improve your memory.


—Mellow Monk

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Fatherhood: 72 crucial tips

From MSN comes a list of 72 tips for guys on surviving and thriving in fatherhood.

Liberal amounts of humor are injected, but for the most part the advice is dead-on.

38. Children's hobbies to nip quickly in the bud: drums, archery, matchbook collecting.

39. Beware your child's uncles, who will teach your kid dirty words, introduce him to liquor, and give him gifts of drums, archery sets, and possibly matches.

40. It is, of course, your natural right to exert the above negative influences on your siblings' offspring.

—Mellow Monk

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Cow-pie bingo

To play cow-pie bingo, all you need is a cow, a field marked with grid lines, and cash to bet.





—Mellow Monk

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Make green tea your New Year's resolution

A lot of us make New Year's resolutions, and a lot of those resolutions involve doing something healthy for ourselves. Well, if that's the kind of resolution you had in mind, then I have just the ticket: drinking green tea.

Green tea is a New Year's resolution that is not only healthy, but unlike so many other resolutions, it's easy to keep: Each day, simply brew up some Mellow Monk green tea, kick back, relax, and enjoy the warm, tasty beverage. Make it the centerpiece of daily tea breaks. Do that each day, and you've already gone a long way to adopting a healthy, low-stress lifestyle.

Green tea—easy to brew, good for you, and an easy-to-keep New Year's resolution.


—Mellow Monk

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Panda twins born in Japanese zoo

Mei Mei, a giant panda on loan from China as a goodwill gesture, gave birth to twins at a zoo/amusement park called Adventure World in Wakayama.



Mei Mei with her twins. (In this photo, she's being fed, not muzzled.)


—Mellow Monk

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Green tea + caffeine = negative calories?

The Coca-Cola Company is claiming that its new drink Enviga, whose main ingredients are green tea and caffeine, contains negative calories—by increasing your metabolism, it burns more calories than the drink itself contains.

Claims the company:

The effects of the green tea drinks go beyond those of caffeine-laden zero-calorie sodas, the manufacturers of Celsius and Enviga say. An antioxidant found in green tea - epigallo catechin gallate, or EGCG - significantly increases metabolism, they say. This, in turn, boosts the body's ability to burn fat.

If that's the case, you may as well just drink a lot of green tea, which will boost your metabolism and give you all of the other benefits of green tea but without all of the other chemicals found in bottled drinks like Enviga.



Negative calories? Not so fast, say nutritionists


—Mellow Monk

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Find the way to de-stress that suits you best

There's no one-size-fits-all secret to relieving stress. The trick is to experiment and find what works for you. For instance:

Distraction: See a movie. Go fishing. Stop and smell the roses. Doctors aren’t sure what goes on chemically, but PET scans can measure how it moves your brainwaves into the relaxed alpha state. You’re wide awake but no longer hyper-alert, no longer obsessing about the problem at hand.

Green hair may be part of this woman's stress problems.


—Mellow Monk

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Japan's spoon-feeding robot

As Japan's elderly become a larger and larger portion of the nation's total population, the labor shortage at elder-care facilities threatens to reach a crisis. One response the country is taking is the development of robot technology designed to assist care givers. The latest such technology is a spoon-feeding robot.



The feeding robot


—Mellow Monk

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Green tea and arthritis

A study published in the Journal of Nutrition found that green tea can help prevent and mitigate arthritis by reducing inflammation and slowing cartilage breakdown.


—Mellow Monk

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Recovering from post-holiday stress

The run-up to the festivities isn't the only time that the holidays can frazzle our nerves. Post-holiday "disaster relief efforts" can also take their toll on our mental health. This article offers practical tips on how to recover quickly.


—Mellow Monk

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Magnet therapy exposed

Magnet therapy is only good for one thing: attracting your money.


—Mellow Monk

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Ruins of modern Japan

Here is a collection of photographs of "urban ruins" in Japan—abandoned hotels, apartment buildings, amusement parks, and whatnot.


Apparently, there are quite a few "fans" of abandoned structures out there.



Reminds me of one of those end-of-the-world movies.


—Mellow Monk

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Man "hibernates" for 3 weeks without food or water

Talk about lucky...

Mitsutaka Uchikoshi disappeared after going to an outdoor barbecue in Japan's Rokko mountains. More than 3 weeks later he was found unconscious, having survived without food or water in what doctors are calling a hibernation-like state.


—Mellow Monk

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Take a news fast

Merry Christmas, everyone!

One stress-busting tip offered by health guru Dr. Andrew Weil is to try a one-day news fast. Take a break from murder, mayhem, and celebrities—read this blog instead!


—Mellow Monk

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Slippers to fight stress

A charity in England is encouraging its employees to wear slippers to work as a way to fight stress.


—Mellow Monk

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Giant squid caught on camera

Japanese researchers have filmed a giant squid alive possibly for the first time ever.

You can view a video here.

This specimen is actually a juvenile—small by giant-squid standards.


—Mellow Monk

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Green tea kills bad bacteria but not good bacteria

Tea polyphenols—which green tea has in the greatest abundance—may suppress the growth of harmful bacteria in the human gut, but not the growth of "friendly" bacteria, says a new study.


—Mellow Monk

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Raising a samurai

Here is an interesting article about how Japan's samurai were raised from birth to be proud, fierce warriors.



Off to samurai kindergarten.


—Mellow Monk

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"I'm pregnant" pins on the train

Railway operators in Japan are giving pregnant riders badges that say "I'm pregnant", hoping that this will make other riders more likely to give up their seats to expectant mothers.


There are several factors at work here. One is that pregnant women in Japan are harder to spot nowadays because unlike in the not-too-distant pass, they don't always start wearing baggy maternity outfits the minute they find they're pregnant.


Another factor is the belief that young people today are simply less willing to give up their seats for anyone, but an "I'm pregnant" pin would make the wearer harder to ignore, the logic goes.


Then there's the dietary reality that some Japanese are, ahem, heftier today than in the past thanks to the influx of western-style fast food and whatnot. How's a subway rider to know for sure that a large-bellied woman is really pregnant? A false positive in such situations is highly embarrassing, after all.


Then there's Japan's nation-wide hand-wringing over falling fertility rates. Fewer babies today means fewer workers to pay taxes 30 years from now, and the government is trying all sorts of measures to encourage couples to have more kids. Who knows—for a few women out there debating whether to have a child, improved chances of getting a seat on the train may be a deciding factor.



"Baby on board" is the rough translation.


—Mellow Monk

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Bottoms up, live longer

News that's just in time for the holidays: Italian researchers—bless their little hearts—have found that knocking back a couple of drinks a day will make you live longer. (Note that they said a couple of drinks.)



Mmm. Sure smells healthy.


—Mellow Monk

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Rare but deadly: tornados in Japan

Tornados are a meteorological rarity in Japan, but last month, Japan's deadliest tornado on record killed nine people in Hokkaido.



A picture of the tornado that tore through the town of Saroma, Hokkaido, on November 7.


—Mellow Monk

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Avoid the stress of holiday shopping

Here is some practical advice that falls under the "holiday stress" sub-category of "how to avoid the stress of holiday shopping." (Does anyone spot a theme in the blog postings of the past few days?)


And of course, when you get home from a gruelling day at the mall, don't forget to unwind with a nice, hot cup of Mellow Monk green tea. (I had to get a plug in there somewhere.)



"Oh no! I forgot the fruitcake for Auntie Em!"


—Mellow Monk

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Green tea fights acne

Forget about expensive ointments and creams: A study presented to the American Academy of Dermatologists has found that ordinary green tea applied directly to the skin works as well as benzoyl peroxide in controlling acne.


—Mellow Monk

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Feel better naturally

Alternatives to drugs being investigated by medical researchers include plain old chewing gum instead of antacids, hypnosis instead of anesthesia, and music instead of pain relievers.





—Mellow Monk

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Infrared cooking boosts green tea's benefits

A Korean team of researchers has shown that a tea's concentrations of antioxidants and a host of other desirable chemicals are higher when roasting is done with far-infraread heat lamps instead of using a conventional oven.


The article incorrectly states that "[l]eaves that will become green tea are first roasted to inactivate their enzymes." Actually, green tea is steamed first; roasting is the second step.


Another point requiring clarification: The number-one factor in preserving the antioxidant content of green tea is processing the tea leaves as quickly as possible after harvest. Harvested leaves must be steamed right away to inactivate enzymes (which would otherwise destroy the catechins and other antioxidants) and stop oxidation.


Small-farm green tea like Mellow Monk's is harvested in small batches. Growers harvest only as much as they can steam right away. In contrast, the massive farms that produce what's in your typical mass-market tea harvest tea in large amounts. The sheer weight of the tea alone generates heat inside the pile that speeds up enzyme activity. That, plus the time delays involved in large-scale tea farming, make for lower contents of catechins.


To summarize: The trick to assuring your green tea has lots of catechins is to buy the good stuff—like Mellow Monk Green Tea.



Tea time!


—Mellow Monk

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The Red Sox learn Japanese

Now that they're going to have Japanese pitching sensation Daisuke Matsuzaka as a teammate, Red Sox starter Curt Schilling and pitching coach John Farrell are learning Japanese.


—Mellow Monk

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American wife of a Japanese politician

Jane Singer Mizuguchi tells what it's like to be the American wife of a Japanese politician [registration is required but free].



"Don't blow this one, honey, or it's going to be a less-than-cheery Christmas."


—Mellow Monk

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Sake fights for the right to party

Japanese sake is enjoying increasing popularity outside of Japan, but in the beverage's mother country, brewers are having to fight for market share against the incursions of beer, wine, and other spirits.



Only five bottles of this special sake are allowed to be exported each year.


—Mellow Monk

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Have a green tea party

Some hints for having a green tea party.





—Mellow Monk

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Yoga to fight holiday stress

A study being conducted at the Texas Medical Center shows that yoga may be the key to coping with holiday stress.


—Mellow Monk

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Matsuzaka signs with the Red Sox

Thrower of the gyroball (a.k.a. "ghost pitch"), Daisuke Matsuzaka has signed with the Boston Red Sox.



"$52 million? Well, I think I'm worth it."


—Mellow Monk

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Samurai sword vs. machine gun

This video shows, in super slow motion, a Japanese sword being slowly decimated by machine-gun fire. (Ladies, it's a guy thing.)

As the film shows later on in super-duper slow motion, the first few rounds are actually sliced in half by the sword's sharp, tough edge.

The movie is in Japanese with no English subtitles, but it's pretty self-explanatory.

—Mellow Monk

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Holiday stress and work

The boss pulls you in one direction while your holiday to-do list pulls you in another. What's a dedicated employee to do? This article offers a few hints.


—Mellow Monk

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