Thank You to Everyone in Japan!

My trip to Japan was one of the best experiences of my life. I met so many amazing people, drank so much good tea, saw beautiful sighs large and small, and made lots of wonderful new memories. I'm just going to give thanks to everyone who made it such an unforgettable adventure in this post. Please comment if you'd like elaboration on any of the stories I briefly mention here.

In Tokyo I have to thank my Chinese friend whom I met when we were both exchange students together in high school who let me stay with her the majority of the time I was there. Without her I could barely have imagined this trip. I miss her so much!!! She was so much fun to be around. I'm also really grateful to /r/tokyo (on Reddit) where I was able to find places to go and meet up with others for day trips around the city. I need to give special thanks to one of my dear American friends from my high school exchange who I got to meet up with in Tokyo and took me and my Chinese friend out to a bar where we met some absolutely side splitting hilarious and very drunk Japanese people. I'm also grateful for missing my train stop on my last day in Tokyo which allowed me to instead meet a really interesting and friendly American from Northampton who I then had fun together along with my other American friend who was studying abroad there. We got to do a lot of things that I just hadn't had time for earlier in my trip and for that I'm very grateful. Also for them putting up with me having to go to the Sumo district of Tokyo to find a poster for my little brother (accidentally got the wrong poster anyways! Hah!). And then I'm grateful to the Northampton girl's relative who invited me to his regular bar where his band was hosting an open mic night and I made a splendid fool of myself singing a song I barely knew on stage with her, but which allowed me to meet some other interesting Americans and Japanese people with whom I had great conversations with. 

In Ito, Shizuoka I am most grateful to K's House where I stayed and who helped me with a map of places to go. I also met some very kind women at a honey shop near there who helped me pack my bursting bags. Haha. They were very friendly and served umai (delicious) honey ice cream cones. I'm also very grateful to the other travelers I met at K's House who enjoyed shochu, tea, Japanese sweets, and extremely late night conversations with me.

In Atami, Shizuoka, I made my best memories at a little Taiwanese tea shop (never expected to find one in Japan) where I met three very, very kind Japanese people and the very kind Taiwanese owner. We drank a bunch of delicious Tie Guan Yin and talked a lot about Japan, the US, and I found out in a Japanese fortune cookie that I'll have great health this year, but bad next, and one of the Japanese woman told me that my lucky color for the year would be orange and gave me a cute little doll bead phone charm (yellow, but we figured it was close enough to orange since that's the best she could find). She told me to name it and keep it as a friend, so I've named it Nanami. Then when I mentioned that I wanted to find a good hot spring in Atami (very famous for its hot springs) the woman was so kind that not only did she walk me to her favorite nearby hot spring, but when it looked like it was closed to anyone who wasn't a hotel guest that day she went in with me and asked at the front desk if they wouldn't mind making an exception for me and I got in! Such amazing kindness! I'm very grateful to all of them and hope to never forget them and send them something back from the US here soon since she gave me her address.

In Hakuba, Nagano, I'm very grateful to the local climate that gave the area at least 3 feet of beautiful powdery snow, and the hot spring over there that was open very late at night and had an out door bath where I soaked and watched the stars with snow all around me, pretty much one of the best experiences of my life. I'm also grateful to K's House there too, and to the very kind woman at the Tourism desk in the Nagano station who helped me find where the hot spring monkeys were! I'm also grateful to the very kind US military personnel there who were really friendly and fun to chat with. And of course, I'm grateful for the monkeys! They were amazing! Even though I got attacked by one, it was still awesome! (It only tried to steal my little brother's gift, which I managed to get back without too much damage, though a lot of cool scratches). And here's a video that I took of the monkeys!

In Kyoto, I'm again grateful to K's House, and to the bar right next to it's bartenders and the very interesting people I met there! I met one man who lived in Wazuka, Kyoto and had worked with the International Tea Farms Alliance there. That was a nice chatty night. And I'm also grateful to the woman at this one grocery store who let me use the employee restroom when I was in desperate need! Haha. They also had good daifuku there. There was a woman who helped me find an Internet Cafe so I could use the internet to get directions to a farther place since my phone died. I also was very appreciative of the help of the shop keepers at all the tea stores around Kyoto and at the antique stores there too who helped me find delicious tea and beautiful Kyoto teaware. They were also so kind and friendly!! And I'm very grateful to the people who helped me take pictures standing in front of things all over Kyoto.

In Kagoshima, I'm eternally grateful to my host family who was super kind once again to let me stay with them! I really miss them so much again already. I'm also very grateful to my host mother's older sister who's hobby is kimonos like mine is tea and helped me find a used kimono gallery where I found a gorgeous blue furisode to wear to the Seijinshiki (Coming of Age Ceremony) a few days later. And I'm also grateful to my old high school teachers over there who welcomed me back so warmly and gave me a delicious cake. 

So many people to be thankful to! And of course, I couldn't have done it without everyone who helped me along in the first place, especially my high school Japanese teacher who gave me such a firm foundation in Japanese.

If you want any more elaborations on any of these stories, please let me know in the comments and I'll tell the story in another post. :) I didn't expect this to be so long, but I felt like this was an important thing for me to express. Like I mentioned, I really loved my time in Japan this winter. Every moment was an adventure and I made so many amazing memories. 

皆さん、どうもありがとうございます。本当にこの旅行は楽しかったです。日本が大好き！！！

Necessary Study Break Quick Comment (Library tea, Mother, Oolongssss!!, and the great Japanese Green Tea Shortage of 2012)

My mother thinks me caring so much about how to make tea is ridiculous. Hahahaha. I posted a status on facebook about how while they had good Sencha leaves at the coffee shop in Mount Holyoke's library (FREAKING AMAZING LIBRARY, by the way, except that it exceedingly reminds me of something you'd see in The Shining and is a horrendous maze for about the first 5 weeks...), but that they were going to put it into too hot of water before I requested ice to cool the water down (thought about just asking for hot tap water, but alas no matter how much I want it to be, sencha is not gyokuro), and then in addition to then almost ruining the whole point of putting in the ice they poured in the hot water directly on the tea leaves (which they put into a bag, but I forgive them for that) and didn't even bother to tell me how long to let it steep. *rambles and rants about why people mistakenly think green tea tastes horrible and bitter* But anyways, so my mother then comments something to the effect of "Whatever. Add water, let sit, drink." Hahahahaha.

Dearest Mother,

You are mistaking tea with instant coffee. Please note that not only are the two spelled differently, they come from different plants, are different parts of the plant, taste completely different, are biochemically almost completely different, and are definitely prepared completely different. Would you bake a salmon the same as a black berry pie? Never!!!!!!!!!!!

Love,
Your Adoring Daughter

Also, three amazing teas arrived from Phoenix Tea for me yesterday! They had a really cool opportunity that day at just the right time where I received not only my tea, but two awesome samples! I'll let you know what arrived tomorrow hopefully. I've been two busy today to try them, but I will let you know that I received two DELICIOUS smelling oolongs and one 2007 sheng pu-erh! But really, I've been starting to crave oolongs like the ones I ordered for a while now, so I'm super happy that I received two of them!

And as most of you may know, the Japanese tea picking season does not begin until next month.

...

NEXT MONTH.

Argh! Why did my Japanese green tea supply have to run out now??!!! Because now it's more economical for me to just wait than it is to buy some older stuff! But I'm so addicted to delicious Japanese green tea!!!! I suppose I should just save up my money in the meantime and splurge on more gyokuro. But I also really want some of the special green tea at the New Century Tea Gallery in Seattle, and I want some sencha this time too... Though maybe I should go for a fukamushi instead. Fukamushi was the first Japanese lose leaf green I ever purchased. Sadly, I had no idea how to make it or what made it special, so it was overwhelmingly wasted now that I look back on it. But maybe I should try it again now......... Too many choices!!!!! Also, the place I wanted to buy my new stocks of Japanese green are in South Hadley, and next month I will be in Seattle. Oh well. I'll stock up on the other smaller things I wanted while in Seattle and save a larger supply purchase from them in September so that I don't have to worry about shipping and hopefully they'll be better at storing than I have the ability to be. Haha.

I'm really a crazy tea fanatic. Hehehe. Loving it~~!

And now back to my work. I've put at least 8 hours into this now, and looking at examples from other classmates, I think I've put in too much effort already. Hahaha. Oh well. Hopefully that means this will turn out amazingly and my professor will be so impressed she'll finally stop giving me an exceedingly large number of +'s after my B's and finally give me an A on something. Seriously! How many +'s does it take to turn a B into an A??? Hahaha. But anyways. I know what I need to do, but without my green tea supply it's super difficult to do! Hahahahaha. Now! Homework!

Library Green, Basil Sheng

First off, I would like to mention here that if I could drown in any spice, my choice would be that of basil.

I. Love. Basil.

Basil is the heart of food. A world without basil... is chaos!

And sadly my school does not use basil very much in anything but soup it seems. And even then, it still doesn't use as much as they should. So I bought my own thing of basil. And now I'm making split pea soup from scratch (it was a mix, but a mix of scratch ingredients! Lol), and it has a ton of basil and is making the entire first floor smell absolutely wonderful. I love it so much!!!! I just want to bottle this scent up as perfume. Hahahahaha. Eau de Basil. Or something like that. I speak not a word of French, sadly.

Speaking of languages, I need to decide which one to learn. It's almost definitely going to be Mandarin, because an extraordinarily amount of research now days is coming out of China, especially in areas I'm interested in. So that should help me there. Also, there are economics programs in China, so if I double major in Biology and Economics, then I'll have a program I could go study abroad with and get credit for! But on the other hand, more countries speak French or Spanish, and I really also want to learn Korean.... But that's alright. I will learn them all one day!!!

Anyways, on to the purpose of this blog. Haha.

Today was like 80 degrees out. Way too hot! I like it 50-60 and cloudy. At 80 and sunny my eyes are blind! Blind! I need clouds. Otherwise I look like I'm about to unleash the fury of the seven hells on everyone and everything around me. Hahaha.

So I brought my portable tea tasting set, a clean water bottle, and some green tea with me. Hehehe. And then I filled up my water bottle with the filtered, cold fountain water at the library, and made delicious green tea for me and my macroeconomics study buddy. I'm very happy to announce a new tea convert!! Hahaha! She thought that green tea was normally bitter. Augh! The anguish! So I had her try my Gyokuro (yes, its been a while since I got it now, its on its very sad last legs, but its still good for at least 3 brews!) and she loved it! Yaaayyyyy! So that was fun. And I got to explain all the different kinds of tea to her, so we had a good time. And then we studied macroeconomics, and I had even more fun. Haha.

Then I went home, and decided to try my new sheng pu-erh. That's right! I finally have a sheng in my possession!!!

On Wednesday my friends and I decided that we wanted to escape the clutches of campus. I love Mount Holyoke campus. It's beautiful and peaceful and quiet and pressure free. Other people though tend to see it differently it seems. Many of my friends refer to it as a "bubble" and always talk about how bored they are and how much they want to escape the bubble. Haha. I don't like going shopping because it reminds me of money I do not have, so I don't really mind staying in a pretty much store free bubble where there are lot of events to go to and clubs to take part in and people to talk to. Sometimes the food gets kind of dull, but I just need to hit up Goodwill here one of these days and pick up some pots and pans and things and sneak over to the Big Y too so that I can get some ingredients and just start cooking to alleviate that stuffiness. If I have things to do, I'm a very satisfied person. Boredom is the worst thing in the world. I'm saving up my money to go back to Japan here soon, and I'm making sure to bring some sleeping pills with me this time because there is no way I'm riding that 11+ hour flight conscious again. Never never never never.

So we went to Northampton! Northampton is the home of one of our little sister colleges, Smith College! (I say little sister because Mount Holyoke was the first of the seven sisters hehehe!) We obviously didn't go to Northampton to go to Smith though. In Northampton, there are a lot of really cute little restaurants and shops. So we went to go look at all of those. We stopped by some piercing places (pictures soon! Just kidding, hahaha), a frozen yogurt shop, had lunch at a Japanese restaurant (I'm feeling really homesick for Japan funnily enough), and just generally walked around and had fun with each other. At one point, just after I'd been talking to one of my friends about the virtues of loose leaf tea and being sad that there wasn't any loose leaf tea stores in the area, I caught sight of something amazing! A culinary shop that also advertised loose leaf tea! Oh my goodness. You have no idea how excited I was. Actually, you might be able to imagine. But either way, I was really, really excited. So of course we stopped by over there.

The store is called Cooks Shop Here! and the tea company located inside it is called Tea Trekker. I like their name. I also loved that what I found on their website which I glanced at briefly before going in (ah, the magic of modern smart phones), which was that they go to the farms themselves in many different countries to secure their stock. Plus, they had Pu-erh in it's own category! I should really expect that of tea stores by now, but way too many still put it under black tea. UGH! The tragedy of it all.

I was really hoping that they would be like most of the shops in Seattle and do on the fly tea tastings for my friends, but sadly this was not that kind of store. They have more scheduled tastings instead, that you sign up for online it seems. But that's alright because at least they did sell very small samples of tea for very reasonable prices, and the owner was very knowledgeable about all of his teas. Plus one sign that I really liked about his store was that he had the same Red Label Dragon Phoenix Constellation (龍鳯星座) that I have thanks to the amazing Phoenix Tea Shop. So I figure the owner's tastes must be fairly similar to what I'm used to and good. Hehehe. 


As you probably know already, I'm a really big lover of the dark earthy rich shu pu-erh. Mmmmm. Just thinking about my 2898 makes me happy. Because of this, I've focused mostly on expanding that part of my library as opposed to the sheng side, leaving me with well, no sheng. Hahaha. And this wasn't a problem when I was just serving myself and sometimes family members, but now that I'm at college where I have a lot more people over more frequently (and I'm now the tea hostess for my dorm! Strangely enough, this is a legitimate position hahaha), so I want to show them as many sides of tea as I can, which means I've come to need a sheng. 


Right before I left Seattle I did a little bit of sheng searching. I went over to Healeo since McIntosh Tea is more or less located there as far as I understand it. There I found one really REALLY great little sheng that I absolutely loved. It's hard to get me to actually buy anything though. I typically need at least 3 days before making any purchase over $15, and honestly it was just a little small for me and felt a little too high quality for something that I was probably going to go through fairly quickly in college. So I passed it by and kept on searching. Obviously I did not find my sheng before I left Seattle. But that was also a space issue. I already had so little space, there was really not a good possibility of me being able to take much more with me. Hahaha. So I figured I'd search for something in real life, and then think about what I'd tasted, and then maybe buy it online once I'd gotten into South Hadley. This didn't really happen either, so again, I was left without a sheng.


But when I stopped by Tea Trekker, I found a really nice sized sheng that was within my price range and actually even older than the shus I have! So happily, I purchased this cute little 2007 Rong's Mengku (勐库戎氏) sheng. (As mentioned earlier, I do not know Chinese, so please forgive any poor translations I may make. I'm working off of Google translator and what I know from Japanese.)

Honestly, I'm a bit surprised now that I look at the other teas by the Mengku tea factory that I liked this one. Though maybe that's not so surprising, I don't know. But either way, this is apparently the company of my absolute worst ever experience with a pu-erh. Hahahaha. I think it was the 2008 Mu Ye Chun "99801" (but don't hold me to it!) that I tried from Uwajimaya (it was the 2nd one I'd ever bought! Go easy on me! Haha) and it was HORRIBLE. Ugh. I don't want to think about it at all. It was so bad. Seriously, let's not go there right now. Hahaha.

So of course now that I have this sheng, I have to try it out and share it! So I made it while making my basil crazed split pea soup, which I didn't really get to eat with it because it took freaking two hours to cook and by then I'd given up on eating that soup and just ate some leftover udon and drank my tea. Hahaha.

I was really surprised by the first brew, because it was a lot smoother and sweeter than I expected. In fact, I really didn't consider it to have that much taste at all. But it did smell wonderful! Haha. But then, in the second brew, helloooooo sheng! Yup. That's when it finally woke up. I don't think I washed it well enough maybe. Either way, the next few brews were really delicious. I got at least 3 more good ones before I started to need to keep it in for longer, and eventually I got I think 6 brews out of it before I decided it was done.

Those 4 after the first one were wonderful. This was a mellower sheng, but it still had a what I will always associate with as tobacco zippy spicy flavor that I really enjoy. I don't like smoking though! Once I tried to convince my mother to make a bet with me that if I could go through high school without doing drugs then she'd have to give me a few hundred dollars. She laughed and said, "Yeah right, like you'd do drugs." And it's true. Hahaha. I don't need anything to make me more outgoing or happy so there's no desire to use them and adding on the fact that I like using my lungs too much makes it even less likely that I'd ever do anything like that. But I still like that smell and taste in my tea! Haha. One of the girls I was sharing it with described it as smelling like henna too! I was really surprised, but it makes sense because henna usually has tea tree oil in it (from the melaleuca plant, not camellia haha) which has the same sort of spicy kick to it that this did. It was also slightly sweet and reminded me of spring sunshine.

I actually like it so much that I'm considering getting one to let age. But I'll keep drinking this one for now and we'll just see where that goes.

Now comes a big question, should I try this one out in my Yixing pot or not?