Den's Tea Kukicha

Kukicha, literally twig tea, also know by its stage name, Karigane, was my first Japanese tea and still one of my favorites. Technically it is a by-product tea, and sometimes looked down on or considered inferior because of this. All I have to say about that is "hmph."

This tea is from Shizuoka as well.

Kukicha tends to be flexible and forgiving, so play around with it and find the way that suits you best. I like 5.5-6 g. for about 210 ml starting at 180-ish for 60 s, 30 s, 45 s.

The aroma is sweet, but when put in the preheated kyusu it turns vegetal, thick.

The first infusion tastes like it smells, thick mouth-feel, vegetal, not astringent, moderately sweet, The second steep (pictured) the liquor turns cloudy and very green, soupy. There's a crispness. The tea is developing notes similar to Hibiki-an's gyokuro karigane. The third and final steep has a much lighter mouth-feel, and it mellows out.

Last week I had a perfect session with this tea, five amazing steeps. I have since been unable to reproduce the same results. Even so, I like this tea, ad it has potential to be great.

Kamikaze Girls

(Shimotsuma monogatari)

This movie is a story about the unlikely friendship between two girls, Momoko, a "lolita" and Ichiko, a "yanki" (yakuza wannabe). It has a lot of heart, style, and humor, but most important, it also has a decent bit of head-butting. Its so...visceral. When ninety-pound girls head-butt each other, everyone wins.

The DVD includes a special feature that provides cultural tidbits concerning the film as you watch it. Last night I learned about pachinko (a cross between pinball and slot machines), where to do the best shopping in Tokyo (Daikanyama), and the difference between a "baby lolita" and a "goth-lolita" (it has to do with colors and quantities of lace).

If you get a chance, its worth the two hours of your life.

Den's Tea Matcha Miyabi

The Miyabi is the highest grade matcha that Den's Tea offers.

According to Wikipedia, Miyabi is a traditional Japanese aesthetic ideal that "demanded the decline of anything that was absurd or vulgar and the 'polishing of manners, diction, and feelings to eliminate all roughness and crudity so as to achieve the highest grace."

This matcha should be used for koicha (thick tea).

Aroma: (5/10 - and that's being a little generous) The fragrance was typical but subdued.

Sweetness: (6.5/10) It has decently sweet characteristics, you just have to be sure to use enough.

Astringency: (1/10) It's as smooth as can be, not the slightest bit of astringency or bitterness.

Flavor: (5/10) Like the Kaze this tea was very mild, and I simply prefer my matcha to have some umph to it. Even when using more, 5-6 scoops vs the traditional 3-4, it only serves to add a smokey throatiness, but fails to increase the over all flavor.

Again, like the Kaze, this matcha comes from Shizuoka instead of Uji. I will keep an eye out for another Shizzy matcha from a different vendor to see if the Kaze and Miyabi are typical examples of that region, but in the meantime, if you like lots of flavor in your matcha, I recommend giving Den's a pass.

Whisking, if you care about this kind of thing.

I have been told when whisking matcha, part of the idea is to avoid large bubbles. Of course this is more of an aesthetic concern, because as long as you whisk the matcha thoroughly, it won't effect the taste one way or the other.

I have found the best way to avoid large bubbles in the froth is to use deliberate strokes, fast at first, then slow. You're not beating eggs.

Kickboxing Geishas

How Japanese Women are Changing Their Nation

The title alone sold me on this book.

I have become deeply interested in gender roles, so I enjoyed this book a great deal. While the author, Veronica Chambers, focuses on the diverse and changing lives of women in Japan, since it is impossible to define gender roles without exploring both sides, you learn about the part Japanese men must play as well. Chambers does a wonderful job of providing a fair illustration of the complex relationship between men and women, both in the corporate world and in their personal lives.

I learned a variety of things along the way, parasite singles (people who live with their parents, who support them, well into their late 20's or 30's ), Narita Rekon (newlyweds getting divorced as soon as they return from the honeymoon, because the wife realises just what her husband is like, thus ditches him at the airport upon their return), and Japans ostentatious costume culture, from hip hop to "Lolitas." Chambers also explores how unique aspects of Japanese culture make certain things that we take for granted, like dating, problematic.

It was a very good book, very enjoyable. Learning more about someone's culture, helps us to better understand our own.

Den's Tea Guricha (Tamaryokucha)

I'm real fuzzy about the difference between guricha and sencha. Both are steamed, but according to O-cha, guricha, or tamaryokucha, as it is more commonly known as, is "made into comma-shaped tea with a rolling dryer."

Though this tea is produced mainly in Kyushu, Den's Guricha, like all their teas, comes from Shizuoka.

My standard brewing parameters for Japanese green tea is to start off with 4.5 grams per 8 oz of water and steep for 1.5 minutes, then 30 seconds for the second, then adjust the time after that according to taste. I start with water about 175-ish, and creep back up to boiling by the last infusion.

In my experience with Japanese tea, that first infusion is just a warm up, wakes the tea up, the second will be the strongest infusion, and also in my experience, is the easiest to screw up.

First Infusion: (1.5 min) The liquor is fairly clear. The tea is creamy with a thicker mouth feel. I want to describe it as mild, but moderate would be more accurate, similar to a mid-steamed sencha in intensity. There is a very subtle, astringent/dry mouth feel in the finish.

Second Infusion: (.5 min) The tea is cloudy now; like I said, it's all about the second infusion. It is still creamy but sweet now.

Third Infusion: (1 min) It is lighter now, sweeter, pleasantly vegetal. The bit of astringency in the finish is gone now.

Fourth Infusion: (3 min) The liquor is clear again. Most of the flavor is gone, and what I am left with is mostly just tea water, sweeter still. It is an enjoyable cup, though.

The over all flavor is somewhere between kukicha and sencha. I liked it well enough, not as much as others I know, but the tea gives a solid performance.



Cha no Aji (The Taste of Tea)

"Director Katsuhito Ishii's whimsical episodic tale chronicles a summer in the lives of the quirky Haruno clan, who passes the unhurried days trying to realize their ambitions. As Mom attempts to revive her career, her hypnotherapist hubby practices on the family. Meanwhile, their pubescent son feels the pangs of love, and their 6-year-old daughter grapples with a pesky dopplegänger."

This was a quiet and peaceful movie, void of the typical stereotypes, yet possesses a charming surrealism that brings to mind Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep.

Set in rural Japan, the beautiful scenery and sheer lack of noise was stunning and soothing. I enjoyed the realism, the lack of melodrama or conflict. It was not a story about a family at odds with each other but who loved one another.

Den's Tea Houji-Genmaicha

I don't like houjicha, and I don't like genmaicha, but after seeing how wonderful Den's houji-kukicha was, I wanted to give this one a shot, too. Genmai translates to brown rice. It was a peasant drink. Rice was cheaper than tea, so the poor would use it as filler. Its typically comprised of roasted rice and bancha. But as I have discovered with oolong, roasting tea = awesomeness.

The aroma is simple: roasted, hint of green, popcorn. In that order.

You can prepare this tea however you like. It's idiot-proof. I have used boiling water for a ten minute steep with no astringency, bitterness, or yuckiness. Seriously, you can not fuck this up.

The liquor is very clear and pure. Looks like amber.

First infusion: The tea is thin but flavorful and filling. It tastes moderately roasted with a very sweet finish that I can taste in the back of my mouth. Very, very smooth, as smooth as water. It doesn't taste like genamicha to me, nor does it posses any characteristics of green tea.

Second infusion: Just as sweet as the first, but less over all flavor.

Third infusion: Sweeter but even less flavor.

I am enjoying these variations of houjicha. They offer a delightful departure from the the typical, though wonderful, profile of Japanese tea.


Because tea has always been for me a window into other cultures, and because my rapdily growing interest in Japanese tea inevitably goes hand in hand with my growing fondness for that particular culture, and finally beacuse I hoped that this themed week could offer a little more than just tea reviews, I will end each post this week with a brief review on either a book or a film that I think was particularly profound or revealing of Japanese culture, history or lifestyles.

Shogun

James Clavell's Shogun was the very begining of my interest and love of Japan and the various facets of their culture and history. The book was among my father's things after he died; he was always fond of it, so I gave it a chance. I knew nothing of Japan at the time.

Ending with the Batle of Sekigahara, the unification of Japan under the Tokugawa Shogunate, Shogun is a fictional story woven around the factual events that occured at the end of the Momoyama Period. Though names were changed, many of the primary and secondary characters are archetypes of historical figures such as Tokugawa Ieyasu, Hosokawa Tama, and of course William Adams, the first foreign samurai.

After borrowing the characters and the historical structure for the story, Clavell then bends or dismmises the facts in order to create a better story, much like legends of old, so first and foremost, Shogun is a story, a very entertaining and classic one, with elements of adventure, pirates, foreign lands and war, of samurai and ninja and courtesans, of life, death and love. Along the way the author eases the reader into Japanese culture. We are meant to take this journey with John Blackthorn (William Adams), seeing things at first as barbaric and incomprehensible, but as time goes by, become more objective and learn to appraise a foreign culture by their values and not merely by ours.

That which is different is not inherently wrong or inferior.

2007 Feng Huang Dan Cong

Description taken from Tea Spring:

Dan Cong is a very old tea which history dates back to 900 years ago. The tea plants are believed to be a specimen of the Shui Xian strain, carefully selected to breed as Dan Cong's tree, which is a single trunk tree that rises tall and straight up, and with branches that open out like an umbrella. Feng Huang Dan Cong was also an Imperial tribute tea during the Song dynasty.

True to their word, the aroma does smell lighter, less oxidized, than the dan cong classic. It has a fruity aroma, peach-ish, but something else as well.

The first infusion is buoyant, sweet, and fruity, with a soft finish, It tastes like spring in the South. I try to avoid "poetry" in my descriptions, but I think it fits. I sip this, and I think of longer evenings, old porches with chipped paint and backyards, sweet tea and catching fireflies in mason jars. I can hear dogs barking and see an orange, setting sun through tree leaves.

The second infusion and I'm home again.

2007 Dan Cong Classic

This one is from Tea Spring, and my very first. I tried it last fall, not knowing what to expect, and was quite impressed.

Note on pronunciation: cong is pronounced like chong.

This tea goes through a "higher" level of oxidation, which you can smell in the bouquet, something darker lingering in the background. The rinsed aroma is peach, then a breath, then peach. Like candy. Its vivid, and I can taste it.

I like the warm peach liquor. I do enjoy the various colors of different tea, burgundy, yellow, gold, peach, green; its a splash of color in a field of brown, beige, and white tea ware.

First infusion is light, a little too light; my fault--too little leaf or too little time. Its sweet, not peachy, nothing like the fragrance promised, but it is there in the finish, faint, with a dab of bright astringency. The second is...not harsh, but its not soft, leaves a dry mouth feel, which persists into the third infusion, though this one is sweeter.

So. I hate to admit this, but I didn't label my pictures when I took them last week. So I had to spen about ten minutes trying to match them to the correct teas. I think I got them right, based on the leaves and the color of the tea, but who the hell knows for sure. Just sayin'.

1986 Fenghuang Dan Cong

After reading so much about aged oolong from Marshal's blog, I was very excited to try this, the third and last dan cong from Tea Habitat--their site is still under construction, so no link.

It has the most unique aroma of the six, not peachy at all; it smells fermented, to me at least. There is a also the familiar aged scent of puerh. I can't help but think that there is more information in the aroma than I can perceive.

The first infusion was creamy, soft, sweet, then a bit of peach, light bodied. Smooth. The second infusion was consistant with the first in color and flavor. The third was lighter and less creamy. The fourth was a step above tea water.

This one was my favorite. I loved the softer profile of peaches and cream. I think this tea has a lot of promise, and I want to explore it further. I will buy more the next time I am shopping for an oolong. My curiosity is thoroughly piqued, and I can see why Marshal is fond of aged oolong. It has character and depth.