kombucha

so what's the new thing that all the lip-ringed vegans are drinking these days? kombucha!

what pisses me off about kombucha, and anyone who knows me well must have expected that something would piss me off about a new trendy beverage, is not at all related to the ingredients, or even the taste, of this fungal tea. what boils my blood is the origin of its name.

first off, what is it? this beverage is nothing more than tea that has been fermented by a symbiotic complex of organisms that include a macroscopic fungus and some microorganisms. it is said to bestow positive health effects on the drinker, and it contains numerous vitamins and minerals. an innocent health drink. with a not-so-innocent name.

the word "kombucha" in Japanese means "kombu seaweed tea," and it is a salty brothy beverage drunk in Japan, often with little croutons floating in it. as you can see, "kombu" is a kind of thick edible seaweed, usually used to make soup broths, and "cha" just means tea. unfortunately, us "Westerners" got a foreign term confused and managed to make it stick in common parlance--AGAIN. and even in modern times with technological advances in linguistics such as babelfish.altavista.com and Jim Breen's Japanese Dictionary website. either source would have informed the inspired beverage enthusiast that the term they so ignorantly wanted to use in reference to their fungus-filled beverage is in fact already in use for a much different drink. a drink that ironically contains no tea at all.

in case you were wondering, as i was myself until i discovered the answer on wikipedia, the Japanese term for this drink is 紅茶キノコ (kochakinoko), which directly translated means "black tea mushroom." upon discovering this most untrivial fact, did i then begin to use this name instead of the persistant "kombucha" before those "in the know" in a most pretentious manner, replying to inquiries about my term with snide comments meant to demean and deride? no. i still use "kombucha," although pronouncing it with the correct Japanese pronunciation that still means seaweed tea.

i do like kombucha, and i plan to get some spores from a "dealer" and ferment my own some day. then i shall bring it to work in a metal canister and sip from it while others around me wonder why i am drinking such a repugnantly noxious-smelling liquid.