welcome to camp telophase

I think most of the people on my LJ/DW who read Saiyuki read enough other people to know this already, but in case not...

Minekura-sensei has a serious bone disease and is going into surgery before too long to correct some of it (it is incurable - treatment focuses on reliving symptoms). snarp has translated her most recent blog entry about it.

There is also an LJ community, cranes4minekura, devoted to getting 1000 paper cranes folded and sent to her to embody the well-wishes of her international fans. The first deadline is, er, today, but it looks like there's overwhelming support for collecting more and sending a second batch later on, so keep folding!

Translation of part of an interview with Kazuya Minekura -- note: minor spoilers about the end of Saiyuki Gaiden (that you'd probably figured out anyway) and how it's connecting to the main story arc of Saiyuki.

Not cosplay, just crappy snapshots of three things I drew and something my table-mate, http://shira-chan.deviantart.com, drew for me.

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Shira-chan over on DeviantArt has a nicely in-character pic of the Sanzo-ikkou....

I was poking back at Adagio Teas, to see what they'd come up with since the last time I'd been there.* They offer custom blends of teas now - you can blend like mad and not be obligated to buy - and while I knew about it, I hadn't paid much attention to it.

But now ... I feel inspired to create a Sanzo-themed tea, and have done so. It's currently marked private, until I feel it's right (and dare to buy it). At the moment it's 80% gunpowder and 20% lapsang souchong. Gunpowder is a green tea whose leaves are rolled into little 'bullets,' described as producing a full-bodied cup with a hint of smokiness. Lapsang souchong is a tea formed by smoking the tea leaves over a fire, and when it's brewed it smells like wood smoke.** You either love it or hate it, and I love it. You can toss some into another kind of tea when brewing to produce a nice hint of smoke.

Whether I like the blend or not...? The teas I like seem to be described as "smoky" (although not to the literal extent that Lapsang Souchong is), so there's a possibility, although I tend not to like green teas. Hm.


Anyway ... ideas for tea blends for the rest of them? I'd think that Golden Monkey might be a large component of Goku's tea, while Hakkai might sip demurely on an oolong. If you wanted to be literal, Gojyo might be a rooibos (a.k.a. red tea), but ... I really don't like rooibos. :)




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* chomiji, of the things off my wishlist you sent, I really love the Fujian Baroque. Yum!

** To the point where I don't brew it at work, because otherwise people from down the hall will be sticking their heads into the office, asking what's on fire. No joke.