Two new acquisitions I was able to source through a Singaporean friend.
Koike Rousoku - 旅館(Ryokan)
(one on the right of the picture above)
Price: 2,376 JPY(approx $21.5 USD)
Quantity: 400 sticks
Koike Rousoku is a Japanese incense house founded in 1893. they are specialized in traditional Japanese candle but also produces a few incenses as well. Ryokan is a type of traditional Japanese inn that typically features tatami-matted rooms.
Koike Rousoku's Ryokan exhibit this particular scent of tatami matte. if you ever visited a spring pool in Japan, you'd know this particular scent.
for those who don't know what Tatami is, it's basically a matt made out of rice straws. that beige-colored dried grass matte in Bruce Lee's film 'Fist of Fury', you might have seen, that's tatami.
Many Southeast Asian countries have been used Tatami-like floor matt and here in South Korea, we have a similar type of matt called Dotjari.
one of the interesting features of Ryokan is that it doesn't catch fire when you lit it with a lighter.
the stick just glows and slowly started to burn. interestingly, the ash it leaves behind is completely white, unlike gray ashes that most other incenses produce. and it doesn't emit any visible smoke.
its scent resembles the scent of a field of rice pads in the countryside in Autumn, where leftover dried rice straws spread throughout the fields. if that doesn't bring you the scent memory, imagine the scent of dry autumn leaves and hay as those scents come close to this scent.
smelling Ryokan up close, it gives me a slightly itch feeling back of my throat. so I recommend you smelling this from a bit of distance.
Sandalwood Pavilion - 鵝梨帳中香(Chinese Goose pear incense. Also known as 江南李主帳中香)
(one on the left of the picture above)
Price: 12 SGD(approx $10 USD)
Quantity: 10g
I've been wanting to get some Goose pear incense since I ran out of RPP's Asian pear senkoh.
then I stumbled with this recipe called "鵝梨帳中香", it can be loosely translated in English as "The scent inside of Goose pear drapery" sorry if it's a mouthful name. 😅
鵝梨帳中香 is an ancient Tang dynasty Chinese incense recipe that involves a fascinating process. check out the video to see the making process.
while there are quite a lot of Chinese, Taiwanese, Singapore brands that make incense based on this recipe, I picked this one from this particular vendor on Singaporean online shopping mall Carousell.
the scent is intensely sweet pear-y while not particularly showing much of agarwood or sandalwood. so I'm guessing this one contains not-so-good agarwood if there's any. fair enough for the price.
while there isn't much going on other than the dominant scent of (possibly cloyingly)sweet Goose pear, the Goose pear gives you quite an enjoyable, cooling, soothing experience.
I think it's a fairly good incense for the price as it doesn't leave an acrid after-scent or harsh feeling while burning it.
