Liquid Proust Send Message

Walked into a rather large tea store and a lady pulled out her phone to translate for her. It was pretty awesome. She ended up pointing at a chair for me to sit in… so I sat and she brought me some tea: https://instagram.com/p/15GFCOxYLK/?taken-by=sinhatin

Ended up being a mid grade sencha that was pleasant. I ended up buying the display box they had for a 2015 harvest sencha… now there is only one pouch left.

I look forward to opening the box in a month when I’m back home :)

This tea is strong!
The tart taste is surprisingly pleasant. This should be accompanied with plenty of water and drank in smaller quantities because of the yuzu. The flavor wakes me up a little bit with each drink which is fine, but it does not have much of sencha taste to it.

Spotted this tea today and saw how the steam and leaf was rolled without any breakage in the package and thought to myself: “Wow, 40g of beautiful oolong tea for less than $4?”
I had to buy this tea. I ended up steeping it twice today and find it to be much smoother than a tieguanyin would be. While it is smooth, there is a slight lack of flavor from a brew.
Here’s 15 cents worth of steeping :p http://postimg.org/image/xujcki0cr

Talk about random…
My bike had a problem so I pulled over and this lady randomly comes out to help me out. I couldn’t understand anything she said because she was speaking Japanese, but she fixed my bike for me and I followed her to say thanks and she happens to own a pottery tea-ware store with a few teas. There are only two chairs in her place but she made me some tea and I still couldn’t understand her which sucks because I didn’t have more then 1000 yen on me so I couldn’t pick anything up at the time. She brewed me a cup of green tea that was very strong but it was because it was a lower end green tea. It was a nice experience and I plan to go back .

Wow… this might just be the best powdered tea I’ve had in Japan.
This is basically a cup of hojicha with whip-cream that has been blended in it (not on top, but mixed in).
There is a hint of creme and a sweetness that accompanies it. Both of those aspects only compliment the roasted flavor of the hojicha. I really do enjoy this one.

THIS TEA IS NOT FOR ME.
I went to Lupcia in Tokyo and decided to change things up and get a black tea with a Japanese twist… absolutely not for me.
I would love to swap this tea with someone because it might end up being used for a burnt offering in regards to the sadness it caused my taste buds; however, maybe your taste buds have a different way of interpreting taste and could find joy from this.

I said to myself, “Andrew, you shall not open this until your other oolongs are completely drank.”
Well… I don’t listen to order given from myself to myself very well it seems.
I ended up brewing a small amount of this into a cup because the oolong looks beautiful so I thought that it would open up nicely. The initial smell is somewhat nasty… but I got over that when I brewed it. The taste is nice, somewhat mellow but I’d rather have a mellow melon taste than an overwhelming one. Overall this is a decent tea but drinking it did not move me to order any more. It’s a beautiful tea and I believe it’ll mix well with floral oolongs as well since it has a nice taste but isn’t over powering. I look forward to mixing this and cold brewing it with some blueberry rooibos this summer :)

This is quite mild for a pu-erh which was surprising. I got back to my host families host last night after traveling in the rain and wanted a lot of warm liquid so I decided to brew some pu-erh with six steepings… this was just rather mild which was odd. The fifth grade is better than this one for sure (both are still smooth though)

This pu-er has yellow/gold flakes in it that don’t change color when brewed… not sure what that is.

The taste of this tea is smooth but I need to drink a few more tea bags to really give it a rating. As of now it’s decent, nothing great but it does satisfy the desire to taste pu-er in a handy teabag version. Still surprised I found this in Japan.

Just ate at higher end Indian restaurant in Tokyo and decided to order a chai.
This was one of the worst chais I’ve ever had. I know it was hand blended, but that doesn’t equate to good and this is an example of that. The cup was tiny (4 ounces) so I thought it’d be strong and bold, however it was watery and tasted like cinnamon and black pepper that should be eaten and not drank. I like chias, I really do , but dang this was rough.
I only drank an ounce of it because of the taste.