Floor-by-floor demolition and the 400-MPH hand dryer

First, check out this time-lapse video of Kajima Construction demolishing an office building floor by floor from the bottom up, instead of imploding it with explosives, which I suspect is simply not feasible in the über-tight confines of the typical Japanese city.





Read more about the technique here.


Next, after hearing rumors about the air-powered hand dryer that actually works, I finally got to try out Dyson's 400-mile-per-hour Airblade　when I was at the airport the other day, and I was indeed impressed. It actually dried my hands thoroughly in only a few seconds. No more exiting the restroom while wiping your hands on your pant legs!



Mr. Dyson, I finally forgive you for that noisy, overpriced vacuum cleaner that you sold to my wife.


—Mellow Monk

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Living in a garbage truck

Outside it may look like a garbage truck, but on the inside it's one tricked-out ride.



If you woke up inside this, you'd never think that on the outside it looked like this.


—Mellow Monk

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From Hawaii to Japan, without a sail or a motor

Kenichi Horie first achieved fame in Japan by becoming the first Japanese to cross the Pacific alone.

Now he's become the first ever to cross the Pacific in a wave-powered boat. (There's some technical detail here.)

He set sail from Hawaii on May 17 and completed the 4,000-mile voyage to Japan's Kii Peninsula in 110 days.

Here's a video released when he first left Hawaii:

—Mellow Monk

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New jugs (for milk and iced tea) and a new source of filtered water (for home, office, and the Earth)

Change is sometimes inevitable and inescapable, so the only thing to do about the new eco-friendly milk jugs is to embrace them enthusiastically. The secret to pouring without spilling is to tilt it downward without lifting it up off the table, as shown in the picture below.

And don't forget to save a couple of those jugs to make Mizudashi Iced Green Tea.

Speaking of water, this article about sea water desalination has an illustrated, easy-to-understand explanation of how reverse osmosis filtration works. The same technology that's being considered as a solution to global shortages of drinking water is already popular as an on-site water-filtration alternative to trucking and lugging around those huge bottles of water for home and office water-coolers.

Resting the edge on the table as you pour is the secret to preventing spilling.

—Mellow Monk

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Green enclave in a Japanese metropolis

In the midst of bustling Osaka is an "amazing rising garden complex," Namba Parks.

Here is a wonderful night view of the complex.

It's amazing how greenery can soothe and relax us, even in a busy urban environment.

—Mellow Monk

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Highest waterfalls

Environmental Graffiti lists the 10 highest waterfalls on Earth.



Although not on the list of the world's highest waterfalls, the falls at Plitvicka Jezera National Park certainly are breathtaking.


—Mellow Monk

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A rice revolution

A professor at Cornell University has developed a farming system that boosts the harvests of rice fields. Amazingly, he does this without relying on agrichemicals or genetic engineering.


Instead, professor Normal Uphoff's System of Rice Intensification is a perfect example of finding a counterintuitive, outside-the-box solution to a problem:

Harvests typically double, he says, if farmers plant early, give seedlings more room to grow and stop flooding fields. That cuts water and seed costs while promoting root and leaf growth.

Professor Uphoff, your timing couldn't be better.



Norman T. Uphoff of Cornell University.


—Mellow Monk

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Chemical-free bug repellents that work!

With the summer heat—and summer insect life—already here, it's helpful to remember that mosquitoes don't like lavender or red peppers.



Oh, Mr. Mosquito, say hello to Mr. Tabasco Sauce.


—Mellow Monk

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Less-junky junk food

Let's face it—it's not always possible to eat healthy. When pressed for time or on the go (or when the craving hits), junk food is hard to resist.


But even then, there are eco-friendly, less-junky junk food alternatives.





—Mellow Monk

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The dirty secret about the Shizuoka label

In Japan, Shizuoka Prefecture is considered to be the source of some of the country's best green tea. Shizuoka is to tea what the Napa Valley is to wine in the United States.

However, because of labeling laws that are much less stringent than in America, tea that is labeled "Shizuoka tea" might not even be processed in Shizuoka, let alone grown there. As long as the company has a presence in Shizuoka, the tea can be called "Shizuoka tea." (Actually, wineries follow a similar practice, labeling any wine "Napa wine" as long as it is "cellared" in Napa, even if the grapes were grown, crushed into juice, and bottled elsewhere.)

Another reason that Shizuoka tea isn't all it's cracked up to be (this isn't just sour grapes, or sour tea) is that years ago, when Shizuoka tea started becoming trendy, the big food companies started setting up operations there. These behemoths don't exactly practice traditional agriculture: pesticides and other agrochemicals are liberally used in order to maximum yields for maximum profit. So, even tea that is actually grown in Shizuoka may be the product of a huge corporate farm.

In short, it's not where the tea is grown that matters, but how it's grown.

The majestic Mt. Aso, near where Mellow Monk tea is grown.

—Mellow Monk

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The critters in your compost

Garden Rant posts about the wide variety of living things found in one cup of compost.



It's a veritable who's-who of critterdom.


—Mellow Monk

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10 eco-friendly uses for vodka

Save money and reduce your environmental footprint — use vodka, not expensive, toxic chemicals, to cure poison ivy rashes, freshen your clothes, and remove mildew, for instance.



"It's not just for drinking."


—Mellow Monk

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A bicycle built for three

With gas prices the way they are, more parents in Japan are biking their small kids to school. In Japan's very compact cities, most folks tend to live quite close to their kids' preschool or kindergarten.


So the Kawamura Cycle Company came up with a "bicycle built for three" that's a lot safer than the conventional approach of tacking on an aftermarket child seat. As you can see in the photo below, another of the bike's selling points is the rear-wheel configuration, designed for stability even when riding over the bumps and other obstacles that are so common on city streets.



My kids are too old to sit in back, but those child seats look to be just the right size for a small sake cask.


—Mellow Monk

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Japan's latest eco-trend: walking around with your own thermos

An up-and-coming "green" trend in Japan is the movement away from disposable beverage bottles and toward a refillable, washable bottles instead.


In other words, rather than walking around with those ubiquitous plastic water bottles, more and more people can be seen carrying their own personal mini-thermos—insulated bottles are especially popular as they can hold hot beverages (such as tea) in the winter or ice-cold beverages (such as iced tea) in the summer.


The photo below shows a cutified "insulated aluminum water bottle" made by Sweden's Laken.


[Source: Yahoo Japan News]



Laken must have made this cute model especially for the Japanese market.


—Mellow Monk

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Allergies caused by lack of intestinal parasites?

Joel Weinstock, chief of gastroenterology and hepatology at Tufts-New England Medical Center, has earned a spot on Esquire magazine's "Best and Brightest" list for his groundbreaking theory on the cause of asthma, hay fever, and other immunological diseases.

"I get about 5,000 e-mails a year from patients all over the world asking what to do," he said. "People know that something isn't right. They keep their kids in the cleanest environments and they get asthma. We get all of these [diseases] that were rare becoming common.

One culprit, according to Dr. Weinstock, is—now get ready for this—the absence these days of intestinal worms. Not having worms or other "enemies" to battle, the body's immune system eventually focuses on attacking otherwise harmless irritants, leading to asthma and other immunological overreactions.


This theory is part of a larger school of thought known as the "hygiene hypothesis," which posits that allergies, asthma, and many other modern afflictions are caused by living in an environment that's too clean.



Dr. Joel Weinstock.


—Mellow Monk

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EcoGreenOffice launches its blog

The folks at EcoGreenOffice have launched their very own
blog. Please give it a look when you get a chance.





—Mellow Monk

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EcoGreenOffice makes the news!

Byran Beckett, co-owner of EcoGreenOffice, was recently featured on TV on Colorado's KUSA Channel 9 News.


(After the linked-to video appears, you have to click the play button to begin the clip.)


Congratulations, Bryan!



An aerial view of Boulder, Colorado, home of EcoGreenOffice.


—Mellow Monk

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In a hotter Japan, finding ways to save the rice crop

Scientist in Japan are working to prevent rising temperatures from affecting the country's rice crop.



A rice field in Aso, with a fog-enshrouded Mt. Aso in the background. (Photo taken by yours truly. See more of my recent Aso photos here.)


—Mellow Monk

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Why small-farm green tea tastes better

A reader recently asked this question: Do eco-friendly farming practices [such as those of our growers] have an impact on the taste of the harvested tea?


Here is my response:

Most definitely! For instance, letting the tea plants grow naturally (instead of speeding growth with fertilizer and whatnot) lets all of the natural flavor-enhancing compounds develop to their fullest. Our growers water their tea groves with only rainwater from the sky, which avoids "diluting" the tea leaves in the same way we've all experienced firsthand in hydroponically grown grapes. Also, at harvest time, our growers harvest only what they can process right away. This stops oxidation and fermentation, locking in the flavor (and all the healthy antioxidants). On huge corporate farms, harvested tea sits around fermenting in huge piles before being processed.

For the same reasons I mentioned above, small-farm green tea is also healthier for you: since it's processed immediately after harvest, tea like ours has more EGCG and other antioxidants. The fermentation that occurs in large piles of harvested tea not only destroys the natural flavor-enhancing compounds, but also breaks down antioxidants, too.


This just shows, Grasshopper, that sometimes, such as when making tea from harvested leaves, an overly mellow approach is not necessarily the best approach.



Processed right after harvest, locking in the flavor and all the healthy antioxidants.


—Mellow Monk

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The nightmare shower in Japan

The most common type of water heater in Japanese homes is the on-demand water heater, also known as the tankless or instantaneous water heater.


This usually wall-mounted device doesn't heat the water until you open the faucet, after which the water is rapidly heated and dispensed.


These water heaters are cheaper to run and use less energy than storage water heaters. I've seen a lot of these water heaters in action in Japan, and most models, especially the newer ones, are simply great—well designed, well built, and as reliable as can be.


But some models, especially older ones, can be tricky. And every once in a while, you'll run into a water heater that can turn an ordinary shower into a shower from Hades.



A close-up of the Monster.


—Mellow Monk

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100% biodegradable retail bags

This just in from EcoGreenOffice.com:

I just want to bring your attention to something very cool that we just launched. As of now, we are the only ones offering "stock" 100% degradable retail bags. Unlike starch bags that don’t completely disappear, ours completely degrade. Most importantly, they are reusable, recyclable and work equal or better to that of other retail bags.

They're good for Mr. Duck, too.


—Mellow Monk

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Robot goat eats losing tickets

To stop gamblers from dropping their losing tickets on the floor, the Edogawa Boat Races in Tokyo have installed a ticket-eating robot goat [original Japanese article at Asahi.com].


According to the article, the animatronic Rocky Mountain goat eats 500 tickets a day on average and is popular with kids (!), who can be heard nagging their parents for losing tickets to feed into the machine.


That may encourage kids to hope their parents lose (which is probably what they deserve for bringing kids to a gambling joint), but seeing the little rug rats happily feed a losing ticket to Mr. Goat will no doubt bring a smile to many a parent's face, which is keeping with the goat's overall goal of taking away the sting of losing one's hard-earned money.


The obviously shrewd owners of the boat-racing facility are also promoting the robot goat with catch phrases such as "Have your frustration eaten up so you can be lucky in the next race."


You can compare my summary to a Google translation of the article.



"Wow, I can feel my luck improving already!"


—Mellow Monk

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Mellow Monk joins Eco Green Office

Mellow Monk has recently been approved as a partner at Eco Green Office, a supplier of eco-friendly office supplies and other products. You can check out our partner profile here.


—Mellow Monk

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Green tea gets "greener"

Green tea is getting even "greener" as more and more tea companies are emphasizing sustainability. Even Unilever, the world's largest tea company, is getting in on the act.

Mellow Monk is all for sustainable tea-growing practices, and our growers in Aso, Japan, are all certified under Japan's Eco Farmer Program.


—Mellow Monk

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