Tea Nation

The strangest thing happened the other day.

There I was, standing in the shower, when the water started to run a weak earthen brown. Suddenly, scents of jasmine and oolong filled the room. Then I realized--tea was transpiring through my pores! Dear Lord, am I steeping? I rushed to the hospital, and was told tea had replaced water as my body's main constituent, and that the number of tea leaf remnants in my circulatory system now outnumbers my red blood cell count. Cool! I'm a walking, breathing oddity. Tea Dude! Calling Discovery Health--get me my own hour-long special, stat! Move over Siamese quadruplets and two-ton man, there's a new medical miracle in town, and he's chock full of antioxidants!

All joking aside, I really have consumed more tea in the past three and a half weeks than I have in the past year. The Japanese love the stuff. It's what they give you in waiting rooms, lounges, and serve it instead of water at restaurants. Sorry, coffee drinkers... the omnipresent o-cha is king here. Y'know, kind of like fried baloney in Southern Indiana.