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Tea and remedy

It smelled toxic, but a dose of green tea cured what ailed him – and make him a convert.

I can't abide that Sam I Am: I do not like green eggs and ham. But green tea? Pour another cup for me.

In the last year or so, I've seen an explosion of interest in this Eastern elixir; people claim it prevents cancer, lowers cholesterol, improves metabolism, fights tooth decay, and renders one invulnerable to like-colored kryptonite.

Although green tea comes from the same plant as black tea, Camellia sinensis, its health effects are thought to derive from catechins, compounds that are eliminated in the process that produces the more familiar teas.

But the proof is in the drinking. Or at least it was for me. If I hadn't exactly been a cynic about the Great Step Eastward, that trendy embrace of all remedies alternative, odd, or offbeat, I had been something of a skeptic.

But I'd appear in one of those Saturday infomercials to proselytize about the wonders of green tea. And it's all because of Mr. Aso. If Boston ever selected a Renaissance man, it would be Mr. Aso. (His first name is Kaji, but just as former New Yorker editor William Shawn was Mr. Shawn, Kaji Aso is Mr. Aso.)

By vocation he's a painter, the founder of the Kaji Aso Studio. But he does more than just paint. He sings opera. He runs marathons. He performs magic. He writes poetry. He has led canoeing expeditions down some of the great rivers of the world.

He is also a Japanese tea master. And his studio has Boston's only Japanese teahouse, a room so authentic it will fairly transport you to Japan. (The tea ceremony takes place Sunday afternoons from 4 to 6; reservations are required.)

Last year, I had caught that flu that hit like an elephant tranquilizer, zombifying you for 10 days or so. The one thing we couldn't miss, however, was the tea ceremony Mr. Aso had invited my wife, Marcia, and me to. So I pulled myself from death's door to go. For those who haven't been to a tea ceremony, it involves a good bit of kneeling on your haunches, which is hard enough even if you aren't suffering from the elephant tranquilizer flu.

Seeing me swaying back and forth like a palm tree in a hurricane, Mr. Aso said he understood I had been ill. "The tea will make you feel better soon," he promised.

At that, Marcia laughed maliciously. And here, let me admit, the paranoid delusions of fever came into play. An aspiring painter, Marcia thinks highly of Mr. Aso. What if he were mixing a poison to push me the few remaining inches over the edge, so Marcia, after a discreet period, could become Mrs. Aso?

"I am serious," Mr. Aso said. "I am never sick."

After a good deal of whisking, he passed me a bowl of steaming tea. It smelled like hemlock - or what I imagine hemlock might smell like. Mr. Aso looked expectantly at me.

I tried a little. Hmmm. Not bad. If this was poison, it was a most agreeable one. Soon I had drunk the entire bowl.

Then, with a bolt of terror, I realized that, like Socrates near the end in Phaedo, I had lost feeling in my lower extremities. "My legs," I croaked. "They're numb."

"You can sit cross-legged if it's more comfortable," Mr. Aso said. I did. Feeling came flooding back.

Suddenly, for the first time in five days, I was hungry. When the tray of Japanese pastries came my way, I took three. Mr. Aso looked reproachfully at me. No matter. I wolfed them all down.

Fifteen minutes later I felt like my old self again. The green tea had vanquished the dreaded elephant tranquilizer flu.

Now, I'm still not really an alternative-remedies sort. And you certainly won't find me running a marathon, paddling the Volga, or, heaven forfend, singing opera. But these days, every time I'm feeling logy, I drink a cup of the delicious drink. Green tea, you see, made a convert of me.