More of mellow Usa

Yesterday's post didn't do the place justice, so here are more photos of Oita's Usa Shrine:














—Mellow Monk

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Beautiful lightning and a big red sky

Click on the pics below to mellow out to the magnificent originals.








—Mellow Monk

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On location in Kumamoto and Kagoshima

Here are a couple of photos of the director and cameraman filming the green tea documentary — "Kyushu, Where Japan's Green Tea Grows" — that I helped out with and which featured a couple of our tea artisans.


To the see the beautiful scenery and lovely people filmed in this most mellow part of Japan, you can watch the finished documentary online.



In the Kuma district of Kumamoto.



In Chiran, in southern Kagoshima.


—Mellow Monk

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Mellowing at Toji Temple

This photo of Kyoto's Toji Temple — part of an excellent collection — makes me feel as if I am there.



I imagine myself there, sitting on a nice cold rock at the pond's edge, sipping a cup of hot tea, taking in the sights, sounds, and smells of this magnificent place.


—Mellow Monk

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Such a beautiful water lilly

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Tokyo, off the beaten path

Purojitsu.com user John Hyperion has posted photos taken on a recent trip to Japan, including some places off the beaten path.



I am not sure where this is. If anyone does, please share your knowledge with us.


—Mellow Monk

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Sunrise over a tea field

A screen capture from "Kyushu, Where Japan's Green Tea Grows."





—Mellow Monk

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Xitang, land of mellow

Xitang seems like such a peaceful place.



One of the canals for which Xitang is famous ... and mellow.


—Mellow Monk

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Mellow drive into a Tokyo sunset

Click to mellow out to the big pic.


—Mellow Monk

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Japan photo book

Artist and designer Annie Riker has put together a photo book documenting her "recent trip to the visually rich country of Japan," which you can preview at Blurb.com.



One of my favorite spreads from Annie's book.


—Mellow Monk

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Photos from a mysterious flower show

If you are reading this you are a witness to Mellow Monk history: This is the first time I have ever posted something I received by accident.


A mistyping of my address fated the photos below to arrive recently in my inbox. I didn't recognize the sender's name nor that of any of his other recipients, but I do like the photographs, although all I know is that they were taken at a flower show in Japan; I don't know where or when they were taken, or by whom.


If you have a clue that would help solve this mystery, please let us know.


Then again, the mystery somehow enhances the beauty of the flowers.











—Mellow Monk

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Mt. Akagi in all its panoramic glory

In these panoramas, Mt. Akagi and Kiryu City in front of it look a lot like the Aso Valley, but with a lot more buildings.





—Mellow Monk

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A day in Lake Toya

Ronald Tan documents what must have been a mellow day at Hokkaido's lovely Lake Toya.





—Mellow Monk

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Interviewing the monk

Here's a photo of the monk featured in Part 2 of our green tea documentary being interviewed by the film crew.


Helping the crew is our tea buyer (lower left), who served as interpreter, guide, travel agent, driver, and interviewer.



caption


—Mellow Monk

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Awa dance festival photos

Jeff Henig has taken some excellent photographs of the Awa-odori festival in Tokyo.



For the full festival effect, you need to hear the music, too.


—Mellow Monk

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Mellow like a rock garden

A nice, mellow photo from Christian Houge's Okuriomono series:





—Mellow Monk

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It's official: green tea drinkers are mellower

Once again, science proves something we already knew—that green tea drinkers are mellower.


To be more specific, a study showed that people who drink at least five cups of green tea per day are less likely to suffer from psychological distress.


This finding, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, is just one of the many results gleaned from the "Ohsaki cohort," a group of over 40 thousand people in Japan whose health was monitored over many years.



A nice mellow grove of bamboo. Photo taken in Aso.


—Mellow Monk

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The Monk makes the local news in Aso. (Well, his grower does, anyway.)

One of Mellow Monk's growers was featured in Kōhō Aso, the city of Aso's official monthly newsletter.


As you can see from the accompanying photo below, the story describes a visit by a French TV crew to film some footage for a documentary on Japanese green tea.


The director first learned about this grower from a previous European documentary about Japanese green tea, which also featured one of our tea buyers on a trip to the area.



Cover caption: "Tea fields in Sakanashi [a district of Aso City]."



The story (in the middle of the page) reads: "Filming for a documentary, to be shown across Europe and in parts of America, on Japan's green tea was carried out in the tea fields and at the tea mill of Koji Nagata, who runs a tea enterprise in [the] Miyaji [district of Aso City]. The program, which is being produced by France's national TV network, aims to show that the tea that is widely consumed in Japan is not the matcha of tea ceremonies but [ordinary] Japanese green tea."


—Mellow Monk

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Tea grove on a hill

Taken in Kuma County in southern Kumamoto Prefecture.





—Mellow Monk

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Tea time

—Mellow Monk

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Hachinohe beach

Here is a photo of a beautiful beach in Hachinohe, Japan.



As you gaze at this photo—click for the larger version—imagine you are sitting on these rocks, enjoying a cup of green tea as you take in the sounds and smells of the ocean. Having an actual cup of green tea in your hands will help enhance this mellow-inducing mini-meditation.


—Mellow Monk

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Wet leaves

Submitted for your approval—wet tea leaves in Aso.


This tea bush was located in the garden of the tea instructor who appears in part three of the documentary our tea buyer appeared in.


This is also the pic we used for our Twitter background.



A visual haiku.


—Mellow Monk

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Get mellow—get outside

To truly recharge your emotional/spiritual batteries, it's not enough just to take time away from work—you have to go outside.



One of the sights that awaits you outside—if you come to Aso. (We took this photo on the way to the top of Mt. Aso.)


—Mellow Monk

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Hydrangeas

Here's a photo taken in Aso this summer of a huge bush of flowering hydrangeas.



Click for the big pic.


—Mellow Monk

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Green tea exposed

This picture shows a Mellow Monk grower uncovering his kabusecha. Once the covers are removed, it's a race against the clock: Too much sun will undo all the catechin-stimulating, flavor-enriching good that the 2 weeks of shade did.


Our Shaded Leaf is just such a tea.


The labor-intensive nature of kabusecha makes a higher price than other senchas pretty much unavoidable. But you will definitely taste the difference in the richness of exquisite aroma and flavor.


Some things, Grasshopper, are worth paying extra for—unlike, say, leather bucket seats.





—Mellow Monk

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Lily for a day

Photographed in Aso, a Thunberg's daylily:



Courtesy of Yomiuri Shimbun.


—Mellow Monk

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Magnificent blue koi at Maruoka Castle

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Our tea master feeling like a movie star

Here's a shot that someone from Aso city hall took of a French crew filming a Mellow Monk tea master for a documentary about Kyushu.





—Mellow Monk

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Kumamoto Castle

Here's a great shot we took of Kumamoto Castle recently. Isn't she majestic?





—Mellow Monk

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Beautiful sisters

The Japanese word for today is bijin shimai (美人姉妹)—beautiful sisters.


As an example, here are the Nagata Sisters. Miho, on the left, and her husband own, work, and run the Nagata Chaen (Tea Plantation). They are good enough to share their wonderful tamaryokucha-style green tea (guricha) with Mellow Monk.


Thanks so much, ladies!



Cheers!


—Mellow Monk

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Filming in a tea field

Here's a great shot of the cameraman and director filming their green tea documentary in the wilds of Aso last year.


The black-covered rows in the left background are kabusecha plants, the exact same kind from which our Shaded Leaf is made.



Click for the big pic.


—Mellow Monk

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Aso shrine

Here is a pic we recently took of the wall and gates around Aso Jinja, located only a mile or so from our growers' tea orchards.





—Mellow Monk

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Green tea sunset

Here's a beautiful photograph I found on Flickr, titled "Green tea sunset":



Have a nice rest tonight, sweet leaves. You'll need your strength to soak up more sunshine tomorrow.


—Mellow Monk

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Crane shot

One of the toughest shots the crew and I did in Aso and other parts of Kyushu last year for the documentary was this one, the infamous Crane Shot.





The crane took almost two hours to set up, so we had to get to the tea field at the crack of dawn—before the tea grower did—so that we'd be all ready to go when he got there.


Because the crane wouldn't always behave as we wanted it to, we had to redo more than a couple of shots, which didn't exactly please the grower much, but he did his best to accommodate us.


After filming, the crane then took another hour to break down and put away. In its six-foot-long torpedo-shaped case, stretching from the back of my headrest to the hatchback door, the crane took up more space in our van than any other piece of equipment.


And because, in the event of an accident, my head would have slowed down the case only imperceptibly on its way through the windshield, the crane was also a large incentive to drive safely.


—Mellow Monk

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Another Onda Festival picture

Taken from the same spot as yesterday's pic, this shot shows one of the priests leading the procession taking rice offerings to Aso Shrine to wish for a bountiful autumn harvest.



Old meets new, as a horse and rider part of a thousand-year-old tradition pass by a local bakery.


—Mellow Monk

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Filming in a gorgeous tea room

Here's a photo—from the "Stringing Tea" series—of us filming in a beautiful tea room in Kagoshima. Some of the scenes we filmed there were water-boiling and tea-pouring close-ups in the very beginning of the show.



Click to see the full-size version.


—Mellow Monk

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Eco-friendly—and cool-looking—buildings

My favorite building on this list of eco-friendly buildings is Seattle's Terry Thomas Building, which was designed by Weber Thompson.



No, not that Terry-Thomas.


—Mellow Monk

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Japan slideshow

In this two-and-a-half minute musical slideshow, James Grey presents every photograph he took on a trip to Japan, in chronological order:





—Mellow Monk

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Mr. Silverback, up close and personal

—Mellow Monk

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Abandoned but beautiful—or at least interesting

Of all the abandoned structures shown in this collection, my favorite—in a kitchy way—is this old Bulgarian Soviet one.



Click the pic for a large photo of this magnificent monstrosity.


—Mellow Monk

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A face only a mother could love: the Amazonian river dolphin

Then again, the Amazonian river dolphins could have personality. And personality goes a long way, yes?



If Jim Henson ever made a Muppet dolphin, it would look like this.


—Mellow Monk

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Hypnotizing iceberg

What an awesome, tea-break-worthy image this is.


Green tea and a photograph like this ... the pause that truly refreshes.



This is only a sneak preview of the full magnificent photograph.


—Mellow Monk

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Horseshoe Bend at sunset

If this desktoppable photograph of Arizona's Horseshoe Bend doesn't mellow you out, then you just have to brew up another cup of tea and meditate to it a little longer.





—Mellow Monk

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