Corn tea March 24, 2008

It’s been over a week now since I stopped drinking diet sodas and Rockstars religiously. I’ve had maybe two or three sodas since then, which is less than my daily soda consumption before. I’ve returned instead to my tea-drinking habit.

Two of my favorite aspects of Korean culture are heated floors and corn tea. If you’ve never had it, you must run right over to the nearest Korean grocery to get some.

There is a very interesting article here that talks about why such things as corn and barley teas became popular in Korea. It says that some teas were seasonal while some, such as corn and barley teas, were consumed year-round. This was a means of ingesting and thereby utilizing the different chi energies of various plants. Aside from corn tea and barley tea, there are Korean teas made from pine needles, pine pollen and honey, azalea blossoms, and jujube, for example.

There is also a connection between Confucianism and the popularity of corn tea as opposed to green and black teas. Buddhism and tea made from Camellia sinensis spread together to Korea from China, and they remained associated with one another. When Confucianism became Korea’s national religion during the Choson Dynasty, black and green teas fell into decline along with Buddhism.

Yes, the winters in Sacramento are bleak. But one of the great things about living here is the variety of ethnic markets. There’s a big Korean supermarket in nearby Rancho Cordova. Next time I go there, I’m going to look for pine needle tea. I’m sure any kind of tea has better chi than diet soda.

Shinsengumi March 21, 2008

Here’s what I did for Spring Break: I completely vegetated, rising only from the sofa to go to the bathroom, fetch a bag of Jelly Bellies, or go to bed. Not that this was completely unconstructive; my boyfriend and I finished a DVD series that we’d been watching for awhile – the NHK taiga drama “Shinsengumi!,” which originally aired in Japan in 2004. So, I can actually say that I learned something about Japanese history while being a couch potato. However, we did have to do some research to discriminate between fact and fiction in this series.

The Shinsengumi originally began as a sort of self-proclaimed militia to protect the Shogun and the Shogunate after dissent about Japan’s future spread with the arrival of Commodore Perry’s Black Ships. Eventually they received the official backing of the Aizu clan, and then of the Shogun himself. Whether you view them as heroes who sacrificed their lives to protect the Shogun, or as a band of thugs who killed anyone they wanted in the name of their own personal vision, they continue to be a romantic though controversial aspect of Japan’s history. There are several movies about the Shinsengumi. Among the more well-known are “Shinsengumi” starring Toshiro Mifune in the role of Kondo Isami, the group’s leader, and “Taboo,” starring Beat Takeshi. Apparently there are a number of anime about them, too. This, plus the fact that the NHK drama was incredibly popular, and the intrinsically fascinating nature of the Shinsengumi story, accounts for the incredible presence of the Shinsengumi on the web.

One of the things that makes the Shinsengumi story so interesting is that there are factual bits and pieces about some of its members. For example, apparently Kondo Isami had a big mouth and would entertain people by inserting his entire hand in it. Hijikata, the second-in-command, was a handsome fellow who received a lot of attention from the ladies.

Kondo Isami Hijikata Toshizo

The stars of “Shinsengumi!,” the NHK series, are largely teen idols in Japan. They are very good actors, but it’s somewhat disquieting after having watched the series and identified with them as the historical figures, to see what they “normally” look like. Case in point:

Shingo Katori as Kondo Isami Shingo Katori, pop idol

Yipes! Boy, how a shaved pate can change a person’s looks. At any rate, although Shingo Katori was very good in this role, he was a very different Kondo than, say, Toshiro Mifune. It’s interesting to watch the different versions of the Shinsengumi story to see how the character portrayals differ, and how the storyline, though based on a few basic facts, differs in its elaboration.

“Shinsengumi!” has a fanlisting, complete with rules which may or may not include committing seppuku should one leave the group. Good sites about the actual Shinsengumi are linked below.

The Shinsengumi on Wikipedia

This site about the history of and people in the Shinsengumi

Shinsengumi no Makoto

Gamelan March 20, 2008

I used to be in a gamelan ensemble at CSU Sacramento, but was quite poor at it so I quit after the semester was up. Nonetheless, I continue to be interested in gamelan music. While recordings of gamelan are readily available, in my opinion, hearing and seeing it live is the only way to experience its complexity and trance-like effect. One of the largest and best gamelan ensembles in the U.S. is Gamelan Sekar Jaya, based in El Cerrito, California.

Gamelan is a kind of traditional musical ensemble found in Indonesia. I first heard a live gamelan when I saw one accompanying a silat (Indonesian martial art) demonstration in Indonesia. The ensembles also accompany rituals, wayang and other theatrical performances.

Most of the instruments used in a gamelan are bronze or brass, so the effect is incredibly loud. When I was in the gamelan at Sac State, I learned that if you don’t use earplugs during practice, you’ll cause yourself an awful headache. However, there is one type of gamelan, called gamelan jegog, which uses bamboo instruments. The effect is very ethereal, and the instruments resonate in your chest when you hear it in person. Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead apparently purchased the jegog instruments and “loaned” them indefinitely to Gamelan Sekar Jaya in an effort to preserve this art form.

Although it is like an orchestra in the obvious sense of having multiple musicians performing a piece of music together, it is different than a Western orchestra because gamelan doesn’t have a “conductor” in the same sense. Each instrument plays a slightly different melody, all of which interlock to create the overall musical piece. Also, the musicians don’t have any music sheets to read; rather, they memorize everything, even though one gamelan piece can be over an hour long. I know little about the technical aspects of music, so I can’t describe this in precise terms, but I hope I’ve conveyed some of the complexity of the gamelan. Some good audio/visual are below.

Suggested recordings:

“Indonesia – Jegog: The Rhythmic Power of Bamboo” (this album can be downloaded in mp3 format from Amazon)

“Java – Javanese Court Gamelan”

Suggested DVD:

“Legong: Dance of the Virgins”