Disclaimer: this turned into a long, rambling post. If you’ve no interest in books, tea, or rambling… consider yourself warned.
loot
Several weeks ago I ordered some tea from Hibiki-an, a tea producer in Japan. I have ordered tea from them several times before and am always happy with my order. This time, though, I misjudged how long the tea would take to arrive. It was in no way the fault of Hibiki-an, my tea always arrives promptly, but it caused me no small amount of stress, actually. I placed my order only four or five days before Pants and I were planning to leave for Nova Scotia. Generally it takes seven to twelve days for a package to arrive from Japan.
So, I began to worry a few days in advance. “What if someone comes and takes my tea from the mail?” I ask Chris (aka Pants) “What if it gets rained on and my matcha is ruined?”
To which Pants rolls his eyes, as compassionately as possible.
“Maybe we shouldn’t leave for Nova Scotia until my tea arrives.” I suggest, but Chris was having NONE of that. He only had two weeks off from work, after all.
“Why not ask the landlord to check the mail for us?” he suggests. So practical. To which I say that I couldn’t possible ask that of them, although they live just downstairs from us.
So, I did nothing. In typical Meaghan style. I just hoped that all would turn out well, and that the tea would be there in the mail upon our return.
Of course, it wasn’t.
Pants and I almost fought when we arrived back in Montreal at 11:30pm, and I plunked all my things down in front of the door and checked the mail, heedless of his arms full of our luggage.
The next day, the tea still hadn’t materialized, and I was more than a little worried. I had dreams of tea-swilling convicts spying my mail from down the street and promptly making off with it.
Chris had the brilliant idea to ask the landlord if he’d picked anything up for us while we were away.
He hadn’t. But hold on… he was going to ask his wife, Maria.
And Maria had. It was there. Thank you, Maria!
Anyhow, all this to say that I ordered tea from Hibiki-an again, and because it is the five-year anniversary of their online shop, they were having a little giveaway. So for a specified number of orders they included a free bag of Matcha Karigane Pinnacle. I have not actually tried this tea yet, but I will write a review of it in the next few days once I’ve given it a go.
the tea
This post certainly turned out longer than I’d expected, so the ‘new books’ part will be brief– while visiting my brother in Ottawa we stopped in at a used book shop. We had just eaten a nice lunch at a great Korean restaurant (Alirang), and I felt like browsing bookshelves (one of my favourite activities) but wasn’t expecting to find much. Now, for background information, I should say that I’m lately very into Japanese literature. Classics, modern, poetry, novels… all of it, basically. Well, most of it. So I start digging through books (which were two-deep on the shelves in most areas) and notice lots of Japanese Lit. I picked up any titles I didn’t have that sounded interesting, thinking I’d sort through them after I’d finished trolling the aisles. And the pile grew. And grew. In the end I had found way more books than I thought I could justify buying or lugging around for the rest of the day, so I chose six and put the rest back on the shelves. Oh, and lovely Chris bought two more, because he reads some of them as well. So we left with a total of eight (which he carried all day… thank you!).
And I was happy.
Still, I considered going back for the six or seven I had re-shelved, SEVERAL times.
from All Books in Ottawa
Books and tea, what more could a girl ask for?
Love, Meggie ^^
Tags: Books, Haruki Murakami, Tea
That is a very nice story. No need to warn the reader.
Thank you. I like it, too, but it may be a bit too involved.