Better Ideas From Japan: Monkey Waiters (Macaques, Actually)

"Monkeys work in Japanese restaurant"
BBC (October 6, 2008)

"A restaurant in Japan has some unusual waiting staff on its books - two macaque monkeys.

Yatchan and Fukuchan serve customers hot towels and drinks, and are given soya beans as tips...."

The BBC micro-article also has a 41-second video of Yatchan and Fukuchan at work.

Don't worry: the two are family pets, and Japan has animal-rights laws: so someone has come to see that the monkeys aren't mistreated. And they're only allowed to work two hours a day.

#1 daughter (irish_brigid on Twitter) gave me the heads-up on this new wrinkle in restaurant staffing. The macaques are modestly famous: they've been on CNN, apparently, and there's a YouTube video spot about them - with decent image quality.

"Monkey waiters"

itn, YouTube (October 6, 2008)
video 1:38

The narrator has tongue solidly in cheek. Enjoy. (And note: you may see a brief advertisement before the video. Don't worry: the one I saw only lasted a few seconds.)

More ideas - good, dubious, and strange - at "Better Ideas From ... "

All the Tea in China

"History of Tea"
United Kingdom Tea Council

"Tea is so much a part of everyday life in Britain that we might never stop to think about how a unique plant from faraway China became the nation´s favourite drink. But the history of tea is fascinating, and in this section we can follow its story from the earliest times in Imperial China right up to its present place at the heart of British life.

"Read about the exotic beginnings of tea.

"Discover how tea was brought to England by a seventeenth century queen, and how important the tea trade was to the British East India Company, one of the most powerful commercial organisations the world has ever seen.

"Learn how the phenomenal popularity of tea in the eighteenth century led to widespread smuggling and adulteration, and about the murderous lengths smugglers went to to protect their illegal trade...."

Smuggling? Murder? The British certainly have been serious about their tea!

There's a 'brief history of tea' - and a look at the Boston Tea Party - from a non-colonial point of view.

The United Kingdom Tea Council has a fine website - with a great deal more than cursory background on tea. However, they've changed the website's structure at least once since one of my sources posted links, so if this post's links lead you nowhere, and you still want your spot of tea - so to speak - here's where you (should) find their home page:

• United Kingdom Tea Council
  www.tea.co.uk

Beer in China: Everything You Wanted to Know, But Were Afraid to Ask

"Learning to drink like a local in Qingdao, China"
CNN (October 16, 2009)

"Another round of toasts and exclamations of 'hajiu' sounded out around me. I took a sip and set down my small glass of Tsingtao beer as my new friends downed theirs and refilled. Our seafood dinner, perched on the single cluttered table of a tiny antique shop, was punctuated regularly by such moments.

"I joined in happily, although somewhat bemused, at each increasingly beery celebration of our host, the worldly Captain Jau. My company, a gathering from four regions of China, was engaging me in Chinese drinking etiquette, in the city of Qingdao.

"A few drinks in the People's Republic of China led me to discover European delights and other unexpected finds in this modest city.

"You'd be forgiven for not knowing where Qingdao (pronounced Chingdao) is...."

If you've always wondered what the beer situation in China was, this article's for you. It's entertainingly written, and gives a pretty good first-hand look at breweries, micro- and otherwise, in China.

The tone is light, mildly adulatory, and the subject dear to the heart of this Irish-Norwegian-American - who married a German-American.