Category: General Info

Hokumei (ほくめい, 北茗) literally means “north tea”. As you would expect, this tea cultivar is apt for the cold climate of northern regions. It is mainly used for sencha,...

Awa bancha (阿波晩茶) is a traditional dark tea from Tokushima prefecture. Awa was an old province in what is now Tokushima prefecture. It is now used as another word...

Kokeicha (固形茶) can be translated as “fixed form tea”, or “solid tea”. The same term is used for compressed tea, such as pu-erh. For this post, however, we’ll talk...

Fukumidori (ふくみどり) is a good cultivar for northern regions in Japan, because it offers exceptional resistance to cold weather. It’s a normal budding cultivar, which can be harvested one...

The temomi (手揉み, hand rolling) process for making sencha isn’t widely used nowadays because machines do all the work. However, the tradition is still kept alive. It’s the basis...

Thanks to my friend Noli from Sugimoto America, I had the chance to try this rare type of Japanese dark tea. He gave me this and other tea samples...

Because of  my previous tea review, I became interested in Hakuyoucha (白葉茶, white leaf tea). We’re not talking about a white tea here, it’s an uncommon green tea made...

There are a few Japanese tea cultivars whose main purpose is to make kamairicha. Minekaori (みねかおり) is one of them. Literally “mountain peak aroma”, Minekaori can be found in...

Stephane Danton is a Frenchman that opened a Japanese tea café in Japan: Ocharaka. A man of stubbornness and prudence, Stephane has mentioned how he has found beauty in...

Green tea has risen in popularity mainly for the health benefits that it offers. There’s currently a large demand for green tea supplements, whose main component is green tea...

Green tea is strongly associated with weight loss by a good part of the world’s population. This has resulted in a large market for “weight loss green tea”, which...