Have you ever bought a CD or record because
of the attractive jacket even if you don’t know the artist or its contents? This action is called jake-gai in Japanese slang. It is a diminutive form of Jacket-gai (gai means buy in
Japanese). Nowadays, people can listen to samples and buy
music online. So, Jake-gai may be an obsolete phrase.
However, I have a tea that I bought in jake-gai this year. In
June, I went to Shizuoka prefecture, the biggest tea-producing region in Japan. At a tea store, they have a large selection
of Shiuoka teas and I found one which is nicely displayed. I instantly fell in love with its cool
package. It was kabusecha and a 60g pack costs 1,575yen which is more expensive
than my budget. But, I decided to buy it
because of the cover. It’s a typical
example of jake-gai. Ha,ha,ha^^
When I opened the package at home, a nice
sweet aroma of kabusecha pleased my senses. The leaves are very fine so I think they are
deep-steamed. The brewed tea was
beautiful greenish-yellow. It has
refined sweetness and umami. One thing that I wasn’t expecting though was
the bold bitterness, which was different from what I wanted. It is one of the fun parts of jake-gai. Sometimes, your expectation leads to disappointment
and sometimes you find a great piece!
Posts
I was quite good at that sort of thing back in the day(the 80's) and I got one of my favourite albums of all time this way-Secrets of the Beehive by David Sylvian. Do google the cover and you'll see why I couldn't resist :)
ReplyDeleteI might have bought one or two Chinese black teas because of the pretty tins/bags, but mostly it's pictures of the leaves that lure me in. Internet shopping is way too easy at times. >_<
It's like Mikuniya Zengoro's teas! Very nice and cute package, but fortunately, they do very good teas too! ^^
ReplyDeleteI too have indulged in some jake-gai with teas -fortunately my adventure turned out really quite well. I didn't know all that much about tea at the time, but bought it just because it was presented so nicely. It actually turned out to be some really good baicha, and introduced me to one of my new favourite teas. I love that you've given me a phrase I can use to explain this kind of buying - it's something I do a lot, and so I think I'll be using this phrase a lot too! ^-^
ReplyDeleteHi, Sparris-san, I guess you are very good at Jake-gai(^^) I searched for David Sylvian, Secrets of the Beehive on YouTube. What I found was that he was playing one of my favorite songs!! >>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZQYg0vjLxE
ReplyDeleteKonnichiwa, jun-san, Oh, Mikuniya Zengoro Tea have tea with cool packages? Unfortunately, mine is not thiers(^^;;
ReplyDeleteHi, pekingtea-san! Jake-gai is a phrase used for CDs or records. “Jake-gai tea” is not real Japanese; I made it up. Jake-gai is an obsolete slang, so some people might not understand it, haha^^
ReplyDelete