Flowers of the day, Sep 27 –Dec 8

Here in Japan, you see some Christmas illuminations around the town now. And also you will find some The New Year items sold at supermarkets. Happy holidays to you all!
Today I’ll upload some photos for the flowers displayed at our tea lessons.


Sep 27













Oct 6

Oct 13












Oct 18













Oct 20












Nov 3












Nov 10












Nov 17












Nov 29












Dec 1













Dec 8

Kisoji, my favorite restaurant in my town

The other day we went to Kisoji for lunch, my favorite restaurant in my town. It is a restaurant chain, but it offers good quality of foods and services. The waitresses are serving in kimono. Their lunch menus are nice Japanese dish sets. Each dish set we ordered cost 1,500yen. I think they are reasonable for these many dish sets.

This is what I ordered, sashimi set
Some sashimi, tempura, some other dishes, rice and soup













Hiro and my father had sukiyaki set
Have you tried sukiyaki? Beef and some vegetables are cooked with soy sauce based sweet sauce. You eat them by dipping raw egg. Yum(^-^)











My mother had Kisoji set.














Hojicha was served with meal

Sencha was served with dessert
Dessert was ice-cream. They had few choices for the flavor. I had matcha ice cream
(^-^)

Some flowers are display at the hallways


I like their service. They have omotenashi-spirit, hospitality. For example, when you get in the room, they arrange the shoes you take off. They also provided a napkin to cover my wife’s bag for preventing spatters of meal. I think the flowers in the hallways are part of their omotenashi. Those services are not that huge, but small cares to customers. I like that

EMS (Express Mail Service) to the US is back in service

This is a notification from my online-shop, Everyone's Tea

To all our customers based in the US,

EMS (Express Mail Service) to the US is back in service now. We are going to use EMS for deliveries to the US again. According to Japan Post, the customs clearance in the U.S.A is still strict with security. The clearance may take longer than usual. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

Everyone's Tea
http://www.everyonestea.com/

Choosing Japanese Tea 4

These are the few suggestions for choosing Japanese tea for beginners.

 Try sencha first
 What grade to choose
 Two major types of sencha
 Good leaves and bad leaves
 Reliable tea shops


I talked about the fist four tips in the past three days. I recommended you to try some futsu-sencha and fukamushi-sencha of nice middle grade, which should have profound color and uniform thin spindle-shaped tea leaves. The last tip is …

 Reliable tea shops
I strongly recommend you to buy green tea from reliable tea shops. I think it is pretty important. If you don’t, you might end up buying poor quality tea. I sometimes hear some supermarkets or tea shops overseas don’t know how to handle green tea.
In Japan, some tea shops have some sample leaves to show customers. Some of them even offer free tastings. You want to buy from those who are knowledgeable and can give you some advice. You might not have a good Japanese tea shop in your town and have to buy on the internet but still dealing with good shops is important. I’m not an expert on buying tea online, so I can’t tell you any particular online shops. I have done a quick research for Japanese online shops before. Check out my past blog; Japanese green-tea online shops >>> http://everyonestea.blogspot.com/2010/02/japanese-green-tea-online-shops.html



In conclusion for choosing Japanese tea, I recommend you to try some futsu-sencha and fukamushi-sencha of nice middle grade for first tea. Good sencha leaves should have profound color and uniform thin spindle-shaped leaves and buy them at reliable tea shops. Then you will know what Japanese green tea is like and the basics of Japanese tea. You could try some other types of Japanese tea for the next step. You could try anything you like, could be much high-grade sencha, tamaryokucha, gyokuro or kukicha. You will notice the profoundness of Japanese tea as you explore. Enjoy!

On the previous post about “Choosing Japanese tea”, I mentioned about the prices of sencha. They were Japanese domestic price so the prices in your country or importing to your country may be a little expensive than what I have mentioned.

Choosing Japanese Tea 3

These are the few suggestions for choosing Japanese tea for beginners.

 Try sencha first
 What grade to choose
 Two major types of sencha
 Good leaves and bad leaves
 Reliable tea shops

I talked about fist three tips in the past two days. I recommended you to try some futsu-sencha and fukamushi-sencha of nice middle grade. The next tip is …

 Good leaves and bad leaves
Even if you are buying green tea from online shops, I believe you could have a chance to compare the leaves by photos in most cases. I will show you some tips on how to tell apart good leaves from bad ones based on the appearance.

** Good sencha leaves **
Shape: tightly rolled in spindle form, uniform in shape and size, It’s okay to have some tiny broken pieces for fukamushi-sencha, but not too many.
Hue: profound dark green with luster on the surface, yellowish-green for fukamushi-sencha

** Bad sencha leaves **
Shape: flat or crooked pieces, uneven in form and size, contains too many broken pieces or stems
Hue: dry or powdered skin, brownish, reddish, yellowish or any dull color

Click for large picture




When you shop around for sencha on the internet, do not determine the quality just by the price, look for good looking one with profound color and uniform thin spindle-shaped tea. I’ll write one more post regarding to choosing Japanese tea. Talk to you soon (^-^)

Choosing Japanese Tea 2

These are the few suggestions for choosing Japanese tea for beginners.

 Try sencha first
 What grade to choose
 Two major types of sencha
 Good leaves and bad leaves
 Reliable tea shops

I talked about fist two tips yesterday. I recommended you to try some nice middle grade sencha. The next tip is …

 Two major types of sencha
Sencha can be categorized into two major types. One is called sencha or futsu-sencha, which is regular-steamed sencha. The other one is fukamushi-sencha, which is deep-steamed sencha. Green tea is usually steamed when produced. The steam processing makes slight difference in their flavor.

** Regular-steamed sencha (sencha or futsu-sencha) **
Leaves: Thin needle shape; well-formed shape
Brewing time: 1 minute
Brewed tea: Clear yellow, flavor with good harmony of bitterness and sweetness.

** Deep-steamed sencha (fukamushi-sencha) **
Leaves: finer pieces than futsu-sencha
Brewing time: 30 seconds
Brewed tea: murkier and greener than futsu-sencha, richer in the flavor



When you try several different senchas, I recommend trying both futsu-snecha and fukamushi-sencha. If you are looking for clear flavor green tea, you will probably like futsu-sencha. If you prefer rich flavor, you will like fukamushi-sencha. I hope you would try them yourself and find the difference and your favorite.
If you want to know more about futsu-sencha and fukamushi-sencha, please refer to my previous three blogs.
1. http://everyonestea.blogspot.com/2009/12/regular-sencha-vs-long-steamed-sencha-1.html
2. http://everyonestea.blogspot.com/2009/12/regular-sencha-vs-long-deep-steamed.html
3. http://everyonestea.blogspot.com/2009/12/regular-sencha-vs-long-deep-steamed_10.html

On the next post, I’ll tell you how to distinguish between good leaves and bad leaves.

Choosing Japanese tea

One of our customers, a newbie in Japanese tea, asked me if there are any types of Japanese tea that I can recommend. So today I would like to write about choosing Japanese tea for beginners.

I do not have any particular brand of green tea that I want to recommend you. But, here are a few suggestions …

 Try sencha first
 What grade to choose
 Two major types of sencha
 Good leaves and bad leaves
 Reliable tea shops


 Try sencha first
In Japan we have some types of tea such as sencha, hojicha, gyokuro, kukicha, tamaryokucha, genmaicha, matcha and so on. If you want to know about Japanese tea, try sencha first. It is the most common and popular green tea in Japan. Sencha is what Japanese regard as green tea. Please do not determine if you like it by trying only one sencha. You can find great variety of sencha in Japanese tea shops. I would like you to try several different senchas. The flavor is slightly different by region, maker, process and grade. Exploring your favorite sencha will be fun. I will tell you a guide to find your sencha (^-^)

 What grade to choose
Sencha has a wide range of grades. There are reasonable ones from 300yen/100g, average ones are at around 700yen/100g, and expensive ones are up to 2000-4000yen/100g. I will recommend starting from a little nice middle-grade sencha around 1000-1500yen. At the price range, you can choose from wide selection. In Japan, green tea is our daily beverage so we do not always have high grade tea. But I noticed that people overseas tend to enjoy expensive Japanese tea. I guess green tea is enjoyed more as a hobby or pleasure. So for those who are overseas looking for a type of green tea to start with, the nice middle-grade of sencha is the best. Do not buy one big package. Buy small packages if possible, and try many different kinds.

I will write about other remaining tips regarding choosing Japanese tea on the next post.

Autumn leaves viewing in Japan

We, Japanese love to appreciate the beauty of seasonal nature. We enjoy cherry-blossom viewing in the spring, and now in the fall we go to forests for viewing autumn trees scenery. One of our customers asked me how the culture or customs for autumn scenery viewing is like in Japan. Maybe in some other countries, people do not put effort to go and view them. But somehow we do.

The fall is one of the best seasons in Japan. The climate is nice and it is good season for many activities. It is said that fall is the season for sports, trips, appetite, studying and reading.

The most parts of Japan belong to the temperate zone and has a lot of mountains and forests with wide variety of vegetation. The good mixture of deciduous and evergreen trees makes the beautiful multi-colored scenery in the fall. The deciduous trees are maple which turns red and orange, gingko which turns yellow, beech which turns brown, and more. We are lucky to have this kind of environment. I think the environment makes us appreciate beauty.



How do we enjoy them? Some people go for a drive to mountainous area and enjoy the view and also some local food or sometimes bathing in hot springs, perhaps. Some people enjoy the autumn foliage in nice temples at Kyoto or Kamakura. I went to a night viewing in a park near my town. It was very cold that night. There were many food stands there and we enjoyed hot soup, noodle, rice dumpling and more before viewing. The park has hundreds of maple trees. They were illuminated and ablaze with vibrant autumn colors. There is a public bath at the park. We had a bath after viewing and warm up our cold body.




At the high season, the popular spots are very crowded with people and you will even experience traffic jams around the area. The traffic jams at popular mountainous areas are often on the news on TV. We also find beauty in fallen leaves. The leaves fluttering down on the ground, and the carpet of fallen leaves are other scenery we enjoy.

This is the search result for images of “紅葉” or Autumn leaves on Google. >>> Click here

Opening of the sunken hearth

This weekend, I went to Sogi park to view the illuminated autumn trees, where is the same place I went the last year. The red and orange maple foliage was wonderful! Now it’s the best season to enjoy the autumn leaves in Japan.


Now in November, we started to use a sunken hearth instead of a brazier at the tea lessons. In the summer time, the concave space for the sunken hearth is hidden under a tatami mat. This year, our master showed us opening the hearth.

A hook for tatami and the black wooden flame for sunken hearth


Use the hook to take out the tatami mat



There are wooden panels under the mat



Take out the panels, and the concave space appears



Put the black wooden flame
Formally you put ash in the bottom of the space, but the ash is not there in this picture

Box of Kurikinton (Japanese chestnuts confectionery) from Ena

Ena in Gifu prefecture has many Japanese confectionery shops. Kurikinton is a kind of Japanese confectionery made of chestnuts and sugar. Krikinton from Ena confectionery shops are pretty popular. The other day, I got a box of kurikinton from my parents as a present from their trip to Gifu. The box contains 8 kurikintons from 8 confectionery shops of Ena. Actually, kurikinton is my favorite confection, so the box is like a jewelry case for me ヽ(^。^)ノ





I shared them with Hiro. Kurikinton is my favorite, so I of course loved all of them. But each shop has their own taste on kurikinton. You will find slight difference among them. It was fun to talk about different kinds of kurikinton: How each of them is like, and which one we like the best. Some have smooth texture, and some have crushed chestnuts in them. Some are a little dryer and some are a little moist. Some are sweet, while some are not so much. You can tell that different kinds of chestnuts used as ingredients can affect the flavor of the kurinkinton. I liked the kurikinton from Kawakamiya confectionary shop the best (*^。^*) It has a nice natural chestnut flavor and a mild sweetness. Hiro liked the one from Suya which is a little sweeter and has some crushed chestnuts. Natural flavor of kurikinton goes really well with Japanese green tea!!

Gyokuro from Kyoto, Fukuoka and Shizuoka 2

Today’s blog is a continuation from yesterday’s post. The gyokuro from three different regions I tried at the World O-CHA (Tea) Festival were all good, actually very good. I wonder which will be my best. So I wanted to try them at a same time brewed in same conditions.

The three teas are:
Uji (Kyoto) gyokuro 5000yen/100g,
Yame (Fukuoka) gyokuro 5000yen/100g
Asahina (Shizuoka) gyokuro 2500yen/100g


Brewing condition
Leaves: 4g
Water: 20ml 42degC
Brewing time: 2minutes


These are the brewed tea: from the left Uji (Kyoto), Yame (Fukuoka) and Asahina (Shizuoka). I though the Uji had the best color, which is little whitish green. Others are slightly brownish. I also felt that the Uji had the nicest aroma.


I only brewed one serving for each, and shared them with my wife, Hiro. Because I wanted to enjoy second and third brewed teas, and didn’t want to have too much gyokuro to get my stomach upset. But you know what? I was so stupid (^_^;) One serving was too little to share. They were too little to taste and tell differences. Hahaha…

However, we both loved Uji (Kyoto) gyokuro best. The taste was clear and fine. It had nice umami and sweetness, and I didn’t find bitterness. I found little bitterness in the other two gyokuro. Asahina is very reasonable than the others but I didn’t feel the much price difference in the taste. I think Asahina provides great cost performance ヽ(^。^)ノ

This was not to find out the best production region of gyokuro. I was just compeering three gyokuro I bought.

Gyokuro from Kyoto, Fukuoka and Shizuoka

At the World O-CHA (Tea) Festival, there was a booth for gyokuro, which was hosted by three gyokuro regions: Kyoto, Fukuoka and Shizuoka. They said that they were the big three gyokuro production prefectures in Japan. I don’t know why they are called as such. The data I have shows discrepancy in numbers on the production amount of gyokuro. The largest amounts of gyokuro production in 2008 are: 1.Kyoto 2.Mie 3.Fukuoka 4.Kumamoto 5.Shizuoka. I guess the three gyokuro regions were meant to be regarded the three Famous or Popular gyokuro regions. Anyway, I took gyokuro workshops of each production. I also bought some gyokuro that I tried at the workshops, so that I can try them at home. Actually, Yame (Fukuoka) gyokuro had another individual booth. I bought Yame tea at the individual booth.

Here are the teas I bought: from the left Uji (Kyoto) gyokuro, Yame (Fukuoka) gyokuro, and Asahina (Shizuoka) gyokuro.

Which one do you like by the appearance? Which one looks expensive?


Uji (Kyoto) gyokuro 5000yen/100g,
Yame (Fukuoka) gyokuro 5000yen/100g
Asahina (Shizuoka) gyokuro 2500yen/100g

Asahina gyokuro was reasonable than others, but still good looking. The leaves of Yame gyokuro were small pieces. I thought the Uji gyokuro had the best appearance in these three. I brewed and tasted them. On the next blog, I’ll write about it. See you soon!