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Happily, the teas of Japan are uniquely and
quintessentially Japanese. And in Japan, tea has been
raised to a fine art that is unsurpassed. In contrast
to the thousands of teas in all of the six classes
produced by neighboring China, Japan produces fewer
than twenty types of tea, all of which fall into one
class: green tea.
Japanese teas are cultivated in numerous locations on
the main island of Honshu as well as in several
regions of Kyushu Island in the south. While
distinctly different in appearance from Chinese or
Korean green teas, many of Japan’s green teas bear a
striking similarity one to another. Common traits are
a vivid green color, long, needle-shaped leaves and
bright, mouth-filling, flavors that can be described
as vegetal, kelpy, buttery and sweet. Japanese teas
undergo a ‘steaming’ step in their production (most Chinese
green teas do not ) which adds to the rich, deep-green
color and the distinctive flavor.
Japan has been producing tea for centuries, but Japan
has progressed from crafting handmade tea to the
introduction of machine-manufactured tea in the
nineteenth century to computer-automated machinery in
the twentieth century. Today, most Japanese tea is
made from leaf that has been mechanically plucked from
tea bushes that grow in meticulously groomed tea
gardens at relatively low altitudes. This leaf is
processed by sophisticated, computer-driven, high-tech
machinery in state-of-the-art modern leaf-processing
facilities.
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