Cha Cha Cha! Takaokaya Shizuoka Roasted Green Tea
I love tea. I mean, I really, REALLY love tea. Of course, loving tea as much as I do means I am always after the perfect brew. Low quality tea produces a sub par cup that simply ruins the drinking experience, while a high quality can give heightened pleasure to the senses beyond mere taste. This is true regardless of what kind of tea it is, but for some reason, at least for me, it is especially true for green tea. If you have perused your local supermarket shelves, you probably have seen offerings from Twinings and other such prominent British tea companies offering a box that says it is green tea. It may taste good to you, but what you might not realise is that saying it is green tea is akin to saying all the other sorts is black tea. It is generic, and refers in no way to the actual blend of the tea!
Simply put, green tea is a type of tea, just like black tea such as we get when we buy our Typhoo or Tetley. But just as those are a sort of everyday black tea, there are various fancier versions, such as orange pekoe and the like for variety. The same holds true for green tea. So just saying something is green tea and selling it is not saying much, and if you are unfortunate enough to buy it and not know the proper method of brewing the particular blend it truly is, or if it is an inferior product masquerading as high quality trendy goods (drink green tea, it has lots of antioxidants!), you may dislike it due to finding it bitter or otherwise unpleasant in flavour. You may even wonder why it tastes nothing like the lovely green tea you had at the Chinese or Japanese restaurant. To find out the hows and wherefores of your green tea, you need to know what sort you actually have.
So many teas, but what kind do you have in your hand?
Me, I prefer Japanese green tea. The Japanese have many, many varieties of tea, but there are three extremely common yet distinct types of green tea found “everyday”. Each one has a different taste, and a different method of preparation. There is sencha, which is a rather “anytime” sort of green tea. It is made of dried, cut tea leaves and when brewed, produces a clear yet vividly green cup of tea with a strong almost vegetable-like flavour. Matcha is ground green tea, and is the green tea used in tea ceremonies, as well as in cooking. Matcha that is just for cooking is a lower grade than that for drinking, so make sure you buy the correct one. It too, has a strong, slightly bitter taste. Then we have hoji-cha. This is green tea that has been roasted in a porcelain pot over charcoal until it turns a reddish brown shade, and it has a lovely mellow flavour that is somewhat nut-like. Like sencha, it is considered an “everyday” tea. It is lovely to drink on its own, or used in a popular fusion drink, the hoji-cha latte. Just as with black tea, you can get special blends of these different teas, especially the sencha. These blends often have the tea mixed with other ingredients to produce a new fusion flavour variety. One such is genmai cha, which is sencha and brown rice. By the way, cha is the Japanese word for tea, and is pronounced chah.
TGreen tea fields in Shizuoka, at the foot of Mt. Fuji. Photo courtesy of National Geographic
The tea I am reviewing is a hoji-cha. To be specific, it is a hoji-cha whose leaves were grown in the Shizuoka region of Japan, which lies in the foothills of Mt Fuji. This may sound like pretension (oohh, I bought this tea and it was actually grown in Japan and is not just from Japanese tea stock grown somewhere else), but actually it is not. This is because just as with any other produce, things grown in one area taste different than those grown in different soil elsewhere. This is especially true for tea. Shizuoka is renowned for the quality of its soil, and for the high quality of the teas grown there. This is one of the best places in the world for growing tea, and the soil there has many unique properties. This is because of not only its weather, but the unique composition of the soil, of which the famous Mt Fuji itself plays a large part. This is because Mt Fuji is a volcano, though it last erupted about 1707. Volcanic ash is extremely rich in nutrients that make it great for growing crops, and each volcano has a unique mineral composition. This means that while all volcanic ash is great for growing crops, the particular mineral composition varies, and as it does, so does the final crop result. In this case, quite simply, it means that Mt Fuji has given Shizuoka the distinction of often being considered THE premier place to grow tea in Japan.
Right, so, this was grown in the best place in all of Japan to grow Japanese green tea. This means nothing however if the tea is not processed to quality standards. Bruised leaves are no good, so harvesting must be done carefully. Not to worry, Takaokaya obtains their tea from a single firm, the Masuda-en Tea Farm, winner of Japan’s prestigious Agricultural Ministry Award. Next, high quality charcoal must be used, likewise the quality of the porcelain pot and the intensity of the fire, and length of roasting must be just so. Takaokaya are no slouches in this department either, taking great care in processing the tea, and placing within fine mesh fabric-like tea bags. Unbleached of course, in order to not impair flavour. Even this will mean nothing however, if the person preparing the tea does not make it properly. To make an excellent cup of tea, one cannot simply boil the kettle and pour the water over the bag, swish or dunk it a couple of times, and then haul the bag out. No, for a truly good cup of tea, certain steps must be taken, and what those steps are depend entirely on the type of tea being prepared.
The Japanese site All About Tea provides this handy water temperature guide to correct tea preparation.
In the case of hoji-cha, one should preferably not use hard water. The softer the water, the better the cup of tea will be. In addition, the water should be just boiling. So, once you hear the boil starting to roll, switch off that kettle, as your water is ready. Any longer and it will be too hot, affecting the steeping process and the resulting flavour. Allow to steep for 15 seconds for mild cup, and up to 30 seconds for a more full bodied drink. No milk or sugar is added traditionally to green tea, and if it is a quality tea, you won’t need it. Properly brewed, this tea from Takaokaya produces a beverage with a clear lovely caramel-like shade and a nutty taste that I can only best describe as reminding me of both walnuts and pecans, but without the bitter aftertaste. It goes very well with sweet biscuits or scones for a snack, as well as being an excellent accompaniment to cooked meals. If you wish to try it as a latte, simply steam the milk as you would for a coffee latte, of course substituting the prepared hoji-cha for coffee.
Being tea, it is rich in antioxidants. Unlike black tea, Japanese green tea is unfermented, so it is higher in one particular type of antioxidant, catehine. Catehine speeds up the metabolism, so that we burn more calories. Drank in the traditional way without adding milk or sugar, it has zero calories on its own. It does contain some caffeine, but the roasting process drastically reduces the caffeine content, making this a popular tea to drink before bed or to serve the children and elderly as it will not interfere with sleep or cause hyper alertness. Overall, hoji-cha is a lovely variety of tea for drinking anytime and for just about anyone, and if one elects to brew it using Takaokaya Shizuoka Roasted Green Tea, they won’t be disappointed. Well, if you are looking for this at your local supermarket, you might be. I get mine from The Japan Centre, which also has an online shop. It runs just over £2 for a box of 16 bags, just one of which will make a single pot of tea, or roughly four individual mugs of mild tea. This brand is also sold in the USA, so check your local Japanese food stockist. Now please excuse me, my cup is empty. Time to boil the kettle!
Tea is for made for enjoyment. Have some!
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Joining Bado Maiku on his Japanese Adventure Japanese for Young People: Student Book Bk.1
Learning Japanese need not be expensive
Looking at the name of this product, I guess it is no surprise that someone in our household is learning Japanese. To be more precise, my two children and I are learning Japanese together. We have used several methods to get us started, and now that we more or less have a good feel for the sound of the language and have lots of vocabulary under our belt, we are ready for something a bit more structured. Yes, it is time to get down to brass tacks as they say. Now, there is a lot of “stuff” out there purportedly for the purpose of teaching children a foreign language. While bilingual books and picture dictionaries and flashcards and the like have their place, I don’t think it takes a genius to figure out that these things alone will not make your child able to actually communicate effectively in the chosen language. Sadly, actual instruction courses for children are pretty thin on the ground, and vary greatly in quality. Indeed, even the courses by various respected foreign language leaders vary according to language, so it is very important to check things out carefully before parting with hard earned cash.
Now, I will admit I spent nearly 5 months looking over our options before plopping out for this course. I am really glad I took this time, as it gave us ample time to enjoy playing about with the language and learning cultural information and so on, while I researched the formal coursework to follow. Japanese for Young people actually has a pretty impressive pedigree. It is produced by the Association for Japanese Language Teaching, which is an award winning non profit organisation (1992, the Japan Foundation Special prize) which has been officially recognised for its work by Japan’s Ministry of Education since 1977. AJALT only deals with Japanese language instruction for foreigners, so a lot of effort has been poured into getting this right. And get it right they do. All the little fine details have been well thought out. From the sturdy dust jacket on the paperback edition of the textbook we ordered, to the kana charts and map of Japan inside the front and back covers, to the heavy duty acid free paper the lessons are printed upon. This is a book meant to be handled by young people who may lug it about in backpacks from class to class! While designed so that it can be used in a classroom, special care has been taken so that it is just as useful for self study, a rarity in a text book oriented foreign language course.
While it states it is aimed primarily at junior high and high school students, it is also suitable for use for younger children who have familiarised themselves with some of the basics of the Japanese language, i.e. the basic sounds in spoken Japanese and some basic vocabulary. This can be done either the way we went about it using flash cards and Japanese radio and TV streaming off the web, or by using the optional Sound and Rhythm starter level designed for the series and aimed at primary aged children from Reception onwards. Having this down already and recognising the hiragana, we were well within the target range for beginning this course. I should state here that really (honto ni!) one does not need to have prepared themselves thus, but success will be much easier if you do! Each lesson is broken up into segments, with each lesson basically taking four hours to complete if done properly. So, about an hour a day for four days a week. The hour required has been a lot of fun for me and the children, thanks to the colourful and fun layout. The first several lessons have Romanized Japanese (using “our” type of alphabet to write their words) as well as hiragana and katakana (the Japanese syllabulary for writing without the Chinese derived kanji), but after lesson five the Romanized Japanese disappears. This is so that newbies still mastering the kana (collective term for hiragana and katakana) can start the lessons and after the short period of time it takes to learn the kana, gain mastery by using it without the crutch of the Romanized words. Quizzes at the end of each chapter test how well you “got” what you just studied and the answers easily checked by looking back at the lesson.
Part of the great appeal lies in the easy going and natural manner it teaches Japanese. Grammar is covered, but it is a far cry of the usual dry scholarly chitchat. Instead, sentence patterns are shown with the technical jargon kept to a bare minimum. Indeed, we are learning Japanese as young Mike Bird does. That is, the text book has us follow exchange student Mike Bird as he arrives in Japan for a home stay and goes to school. So, we learn polite speech to use with strangers and adults and people who outrank us socially and what not, as well as casual conversation in context. This also aids in learning entire phrases and adding vocabulary, as we experience shopping, sight seeing and so on with Mike and his host family, school mates, and friends. In this manner, this book alone introduces the student to 450 new words, including 28 verbs and adjectives, in a relatively fun and painless manner. There are sections that carry a cassette tape symbol, which can be either be completed while listening t the quite optional cassette tape, or easily completed without it. The tapes are purely optional as they are meant to merely give the student practice listening to Japanese, but if you have other ways to listen to naturally spoken native Japanese, this is a non issue. In addition, there are little sidebars with bits called Japan News which provide little news blurbs with cultural information about Japan, both ancient and modern. The little asides will occasionally contain fun little activities that can be done as well, to gain a deeper understanding.
The text book also contains a handy dictionary feature. The dictionary is presented in three formats. The first section has the kana written out and then the English equivalent. The next has the Japanese word in romaji (Romanized Japanese) with its English counterpart, and the last section has the English word followed by its counterpart both in kana as well as romaji. In addition, in all three sections, the lesson and page number one first encounters the vocabulary in is presented, making for an easy review in context. This eliminates the need for a young student to need to shell out money on a separate dictionary straight off, not to mention the convenience of not having to have yet another text to hand to look things up.
All in all, this is proving to be an excellent choice, especially when used with the kana workbook which I shall be reviewing next. It is the first of three levels, and promises to deliver an excellent mastery of basic Japanese, leaving one with the ability to carry on actual meaningful conversations and deal with everyday situations. As an adult, I have found this just as useful as the proposed target audience, and a nice springboard to follow on with the more grown up set produced by AJALT, Japanese for Busy People. My five and seven year old found this fun to follow and mastery of the lessons simple thanks to the excellent forethought in design and execution, so it is a sure fire winner for both children and the most timid of self study adult learners. Available from Amazon and The Book Depository (free worldwide shipping).
