Welcome Bibi-san!

You are very kind, Bibi-san.

Does Victorian Earl Grey have bergamot as well as rose petals and lavender? In Japan I tried a bergamot-flavored Kinoko no Yama (きのこの山） chocolate mushroom. Japanese people are rather adventurous with flavors (as are you, it seems), and it was quite curious to have chocolate with that Earl Grey taste. I imagine mixed with rose and lavender would  be curious too! I am interested to try it.



I like Kwan Yin (Iron Goddess) tea, "popcorn rice" tea (it has popped rice in it). I enjoy white tea and green tea and also teas that aren't actually tea - te aromatica, as they call them in Spanish - like jamaica tea (which has nothing to do with the island - jamaica, pronounced ha-ma-i-ca is actually dried hibiscus flower) and a special seven-blossom tea that I recently found.

That really only scratches the surface of my tea adventures. I do love tea, and I adore the tea ceremony too.

Cure Dolly, the Victorian Earl Grey blend I tried, did indeed include bergamot! Haha, yes, I am adventurous with flavours! I enjoy trying new things.. I have had those chocolate mushrooms before and to think there are also a bergamot variety makes me all the more excite to see if I can track down a box!

Haha, somewhat off topic but related to adventurous flavours: I read the entry you posted on eating raw egg and natto, and I must say that I have been planning to try natto even against my mother's reccomendation not to, haha! I also enjoy experimenting with cuisine and have been delving in preparing japanese macrobiotic meals which has been quite interesting.

Oh! I haven't heard of Kwan Yin tea! Nor have I tried seven blossom tea, though both do sound intriguing! Haha and actually, I just purchased some "genmaicha" tea, yesterday! ...I opened the package and spied the green tea leaves and popped brown rice.. and then what appeared to be teensy tiny little popped corn!!! Which I found out is actually a popped rice grain, haha!! I had a pot this morning with rice and miso soup. The popcorn tea was reccomended in my macrobiotic cookbook :-) Oh, and I do enjoy hisbiscus tea, especially iced!

I am enamoured by tea ceremony as well! I really wish to learn the art of preparing and serving tea. It seems that there is a bit of ceremony surrounding tea in several cultures! So inspiring!
Thank you for sharing, Cure Dolly!

Gemaicha, that is the proper name. Silly dolly just tends to call it popcorn rice tea. Apparently it was originally used by poor peeples who could not afford much tea. Rice was much cheaper so they used it to make the tea go further. But it turned out to be very delicious in its own rice.

Raw egg I cannot recommend. Natto - well I guess it just depends if you like natto. To me it was part of the experience of being in Japan. I don't love it, but I don't dislike it either. I think it is the texture that really troubles people, and that does take a little getting used to. It isn't as bad as raw egg in texture though - at least I don't find it so. Raw egg really is a matter of gaman shimasu for me!

I like rooibos - I had vanilla rooibos that a friend gave me once and really loved it!

Cure Dolly, I thought that your description of popcorn rice sounded so familiar to the tea I had this morning that I looked up the name and found that they seemed to be the same, hehe! I was delighted to know that it is also called popcorn rice tea because that's what I interpretted the tiny popped rice grains to be when I first saw it!! Hehe, I even ate one tiny popped rice! (=^x^=)

My mother warned me of the scent, it just wasn'tsomehting she enjoyed, ha! Well, I don't really mind slimy textures, I dont think.. Recently, I tried Konnyaku, which isn't really slimy, but the texture was not something I enjoyed! I shall try natto just because I am curious! ..and I dont know about raw egg.. I'm mostly afraid of the health risks..

Mmmm, vanilla rooibos sounds delicious! I've only had rooibos a couple times, though!

I think the thing with raw egg is to get one's eggs from a reliable source. I watch an adorable cooking series on YouTube, Cooking With Dog, which is made in Japan (though Frances-chan, the dog and host in question, graciously speaks English with a Frenchanese accent so that Westerners can also learn how to cook). In that series, they sometimes use eggs, and I can tell by the deep orange color of the yolks that the eggs they use are much higher quality than are generally available in American stores. Cure Dolly might be able to confirm this, but I think food is treated much more respectfully in Japan, and that extends to agriculture and food safety, which means raw eggs are safe there because they were never contaminated with food-borne illness in the first place. If I were to try raw egg here (and I admit I like eggnog, Caesar salad, raw cookie dough and fried eggs with runny yolks) I would make sure my eggs were bought from a farmer who had not lost her love. Fortunately, the mid-sized West Coast city I live in has a magic co-op that lets me get wonderful eggs quite easily and affordably.

Actually I have always had a bit of a raw-egg-white phobia. I like my yolks runny but I tend to prefer them harder than I like them (hee paradox apology) just to avoid the possibility of any yikkity-pikkity-poo runny white. So you see what I mean by eating raw egg being an exercise in gaman suru!

Yes there is a very different culture of food in Japan. People respect food and talk about it with love and respect. In a way it is more like France in that respect - but there is a difference. In Japan there is a sense of gratitude and love for food, not just hedonistic appreciation, if that makes sense. "Itadakimasu" and "Gochisousama (deshita)" are addressed not just to other humans but to the kindness of the sentient universe that surrounds us.

Actually I come up against a big translation block here. Saying "the universe" in a quasi-spiritual sense can sound like Western "New-Age" nonsense and really it is nothing at all like that, but neither is it the very literal-specific personal-theism of real Western religion. Many Japanese would be happy to say "Kami-sama" (God in a Shinto/Buddhist sense - and yes, Japanese Buddhism is not quasi-atheistic like the Western parody of it), but that isn't really the point about Itadakimasu. The real point is more to do with a) non-individualism and b) not regarding the human brain as the only manifestation of universal consciousness.

Oh dear - I am getting rather over-complex in talking about food, aren't I? But it is relevant I think. It is a love of food because food is seen as love - as the love of a world that is infused with the Divine, a world in which beings are sacrificed to feed us (including plant-beings) in a manner that is heroic and a little sad but ultimately a testament to the connectedness of all being. Gratitude and love of food is "sacramental" - it has to do with our playing our part as the consciousness-center (but not the exclusive consciousness) of this particular below-heaven world, returning the love that has been shown us and being a loving part of the Whole - and fulfilling our part in the harmony of the world-system.

This is very inadequately expressed, and I apologize. But while no Japanese person is going to give you a long-winded and inept speech like this, I promise you that these are some of the feelings that underlie the Japanese respect and love for food.

And yes - they do really enjoy it too - in the discerning way the French do.

Oh and eating raw egg and (this is hard to explain) allowing one's higher self to appreciate it even while one's lower self is a bit disgusted, is part of participating in this group-food-harmony-sacrament. And it is a group thing, which is why I certainly won't be eating raw egg (or natto come to that) on my own initiative in the West. (But will whenever that is the harmony of the situation in Japan or among Japanese people).

If you haven't seen them already you may find these two articles help you see how this food-harmony-love devotion manifests in some popular Japanese culture:

Absolutely THE Best Vegetable Music Video Ever

Carrots are Made with Love