In this country, Japanese tea means "The tea made in Japan" or "The tea drunk well in Japan".There are many kinds of Japanese tea, used in the tea ceremony or drunk everyday life and so on. Today, I'll show you the examples.
Sen-tea is the most popular tea in Japan. "Sen " means "steamed" , in short , Sen-tea is steamed tea. This is very rare. Actually, it is only Japan that people make tea with steam and drink it in the world. In addition, Sen-tea in the meanings of the narrow sense is the tea which is made using the sprout which I cultivated without shutting out the sunlight. So Gyokuro is a kind of Sen-tea, but not Sen-tea.
Gyokuro is high-quality tea. The biggest difference with the general Sen-tea is to cut off sunlight for two weeks at least before harvested. Gyokuro's feature is its sweetness. The most delicious temperature of the tea is around 60 degrees. In Sen-tea ceremony, they base on this property. At first, they pour low temperature hot water into the tea pot and taste sweetness. And second, they pour high temperature hot water and taste bitterness. This way of making tea called "Nisendasi" .
Ban-tea is a kind of Sen-tea too. Ban-tea is made with bigger leaves than the leaves which is used with Sen-tea. For this reason, bitterness is less than Sen-tea, but acerbity is more than that. Unlike Gyokuro, Ban-tea is popular and inexpensive tea. "Ban" means ordinary in Japanese. Ban-tea is very popular tea to be used in a proverb as a pronoun of universality.
Next, I'll show you the other kind of tea, Mattya.Mattya is not drunk in everyday life, but it is used in the Japanese tea ceremony. The way of making Mattya is very different of the way making Sen-tea. Mattya is called powdered green tea. It is made with leaves of tea woods which is steamed and ground called Ten-tea. To tell the truth, Mattya is the thing which processed Ten-tea. Ten-tea is the same as Gyokuro and is cultivated with the sunlight cut off. Because it is dried much, it resembles green lavers in appearance. Ten-tea, also Mattya have high-ability to relax people in Japanese tea. I think that is the reason to be used in the tea ceremony.
These teas are not all of the Japanese tea. But these are very major teas. If you have a chance to drink one of the these teas, please recall today's blog.
