Well, tea is the most popular drink in Japan and is an important part of their culture, so tea is a great thing to drink there. You can find it pretty much everywhere, and often it is served for free at restaurants, just like water. Below you’ll find a list of the most common and popular varieties of tea in Japan. I like some, and dislike others – but everyone’s tastes are different. Let’s explore.

Green Tea (Ryokucha)

Green tea is undoubtedly the most popular tea in Japan. As expected, green tea is green in color, and comes in various grades. The various grades are determined by when the leaves are harvested and how much sun exposure they’ve seen. Green tea is also probably the most popular Japanese tea consumed outside of Japan as well.

Green tea has a mild, earthy, grass-like taste to it. While I’m not a huge fan of straight up green tea, I do enjoy it when it is flavored. Even something as simple as lemon and ginseng can really brighten up this tea for me. Overall green tea is pretty good. I just don’t particularly care for it in its unaltered form.

Green Tea With Roasted Brown Rice (Genmaicha)

This tea is a popular alternative to the standard green tea. Unpolished brown grains of rice are roasted and mixed with green tea leaves to create this tea. It is yellow in color, and the flavor is distinctly different from that of regular green tea. It was originally drank by the poor as the rice served as a filler to reduce the price of the tea.

This tea’s flavor combines the grassy taste of green tea with the aroma of roasted rice. If you like green tea and also enjoy (roasted) rice, then you’ll probably enjoy this tea as well. This tea is also referred to as “popcorn tea” due to what can happen to some of the rice kernels during roasting as you can see in the photo above.

Roasted Green Tea (Hojicha)

Similar the the above, this green tea roasts the leaves and forgoes the brown rice. The roasted leaves become red-brown in color and as a result of the roasting, this tea is sweeter. The tea is also less astringent due to the high temperature roasting process.

I don’t think I’ve ever had this tea, but the taste is said to be a mild, toasty, caramel-like flavor. It doesn’t sound too bad, I’m just usually not a fan of toasty type teas. Because it is so mild, it makes for a good after dinner tea and is also favored by young children and the elderly.

Residual Green Tea (Konacha)

This tea uses all the leftovers from regular green tea. It’s composed of tea dust, buds, and small leaves. Basically it’s all the stuff that isn’t good enough to go into regular green tea. This is the kind that you’ll most often find for free at restaurants because of how low a grade it is. It is popular to drink with sushi though, which is why most of the restaurants you’ll find this for free at are the cheap sushi places.

I think you’d expect this tea to have a weaker flavor, given it’s just low grade tea – but the flavor for this green tea is actually quite strong. If you really like green tea, you probably won’t mind that though, especially if you are having it with sushi. I don’t prefer konacha myself though.

Powdered Green Tea (Maccha)

Apparently maccha is the highest grade of green tea, but I think it is probably my least favorite. The highest quality tea leaves are dried and ground into a fine powder which is then mixed with hot water. It’s also the kind of green tea you’ll find served at a tea ceremony.

Maccha is also a very popular flavor for sweets and ice creams in Japan. You’ll find everything from maccha flavored ice cream to maccha flavored Kit Kats. Due to this, I really wish I liked maccha more. I think it’s okay when mixed with something else, or in small doses, but overall, I think maccha is just average. It has more of a bitter, vegetable-like taste that I don’t particularly care for.

Oolong Tea (Oolongcha)

Oolong tea is a type of Chinese tea that takes oxidized tea leaves (leaves that are left on their own in a climate-controlled room where they turn progressively darker due to the oxygen exposure) and then steams or roasts them to halt the oxidation process, ranging anywhere from 8% to 85% oxidization. Brown in color, this tea can be served hot or cold and is found all over Japan.

Oolong encompasses many different flavors and varieties. Oolong can be sweet and fruity, or thick and woody. Or any combination in between. I prefer the sweeter, fruitier varieties, but that’s just me.

Black Tea (Kocha)

Kocha actually means “red tea” in Japanese, the color of the tea is a dark ruddy brown, and the English name of it is “black tea”. Science. These tea leaves are even more oxidized than oolong’s, and it is found most often at Western style cafes and restaurants.

Ah, black tea. I like black tea. Western black teas, Japanese black teas, they’re all great in my book. There are many varieties of black tea as well, but if you’ve had any kind of black tea before, you have a good idea of what you’d be getting yourself into with a black tea in Japan.

Jasmine Tea (Jasmine-cha)

Jasmine tea is most popular in Okinawa, but not so much in mainland Japan. It’s made by combining jasmine flowers with either green tea or oolong tea, giving the tea a subtle, flowery taste.

I like how this tea smells, I just don’t like how it tastes. I’ve never really been big on eating things that taste like flower petals, and jasmine tea is one of those things. It’s just weird to me.

Barley Tea (Mugicha)

I hate barley tea. For some reason this is a popular summer drink, where it is served cold – possibly the worst way to experience this tea. It is made by infusing roasted barley into water, and it tastes much like you would expect. Like grain water. It has a burned, bitter taste to it. The best way I can think to explain it is like drinking Cheerios in liquid form. Cold. Blech.

Kelp Tea (Kombucha)

Okay, so honestly I didn’t even know this was a thing until writing this post, but really? Kelp tea? That sounds terrible. Maybe I just don’t like the ocean enough.

This drink is made by mixing ground or sliced seaweed into hot water. I’m guessing it would taste just as you’d expect. Like the ocean. I dunno about you, but drinking hot ocean water sounds anything but refreshing. Apparently this tea is sometimes served as a welcome drink at ryokans. Pretty risky tea to serve as a welcoming beverage if you ask me.

Also, if anyone has actually experienced kelp tea, please tell me about it in the comments. Is it as icky as it sounds?

Tea, Tea Everywhere!

So, have you picked a favorite from the above list? Well where can you find it? Teas of all varieties aren’t really that hard to find in Japan, fortunately. You can find teas at vending machines, restaurants, convenience stores, and supermarkets. You can even find it being served at festivals, temples, and gardens – sometimes for free.

Whether you want some tea in a mug, cup, or bottle, hot, cold, or tepid, instantly, or for later – you’ll find what you are looking for somewhere in Japan. Many bottled varieties are available in Japan’s fancy vending machines as well as convenience stores and markets. Hot tea is less widely available in the summertime, but Japan on the whole thinks that hot drinks are mostly for winter and cold drinks are mostly for summer.

While Japan has teas from all over the world available to them, these are the teas that are either Japanese by nature, or molded into Japanese culture. Japan was first introduced to tea by the Chinese in the 700s, and tea has been a huge part of Japanese culture ever since.

So tell me, which Japanese tea is your favorite? Least favorite? If you happen to dislike all of them, which other variety of tea is your favorite? (Mine’s Earl Grey). Leave your tea thoughts in the comments!

Sneaking Out

First of all, we weren’t supposed to stay out all night with any of our language partners because apparently the program directors thought that was a no-no. If we did stay out all night, we had to fill out overnight forms saying where we were going to be and what we were doing. One of the cooler language partners encouraged us to make up a story about where we were going, and then just go clubbing with her and her friends the whole night instead.

So, me and my good friend Hunter, being the responsible young gentlemen that we are, filled out an overnight form saying that we’d be overnight at a manga cafe or some nonsense like that. Then, around midnight, Hunter and I left the dorm and took a train to meet up with our Japanese friend and her group of friends before heading out to the clubs.

Staying Up All Night

In America at least, people would normally go out between like 10 and 12, then stay out until they got tired or until the bars and clubs close at like 2:30am. In Japan, though – people go out at like midnight, get to the club at like 1am and then stay out all night until morning when the trains start running again at like 5am or so. It was crazy. Coming out of a dark club woozy with alcohol into the bright morning sun is a surreal experience.

Staying out all night was really fun, but it certainly made for a rough next day. Getting back to the dorm at like 6 or 7 in the morning didn’t leave a lot of time for sleep before any activities, and I even ended up skipping out on one of the group activities because I just didn’t have the energy.

In the Club

The first night we went out was definitely the most hilarious. Upon arriving at the club, the Japanese girls showed their IDs and paid their cover and got one drink ticket. These drink tickets were redeemable at the bar for drinks, but more on that later. When Hunter and I got up to the doorman and showed our passports, the guy gave us each two drink tickets just because we were Americans. The Japanese girls thought this was unfair. Hunter and I thought it was awesome.

Anyway, at this club they had a drink ticket vending machine off to the side, and there you bought drink tickets and then took those drink tickets over to the bar and exchanged them for various drinks. The cost of drinks ranged from one ticket to a few, and I’m not sure how efficient a system this way, but it was interesting nonetheless.

As far as atmosphere inside the club goes, it was pretty similar to what I’d gotten used to back home, just with a bunch of Japanese people instead of college age white kids. The only bad part was that people were smoking indoors, and smoke really bothers me, but most of the smokers stayed around the outer perimeter of the venue so it wasn’t too terrible.

Do I Recommend It?

If you enjoy clubbing in your home country, chances are you’ll enjoy clubbing in Japan. My only advice is, don’t go alone, and go with someone who knows good places to go. If you go by yourself or with people who are equally as out of their element as you are, you’ll be less likely to have as awesome a time I think.

As far as language skills go, you don’t really need to know much Japanese to have a good time at the club. Most all drink orders sound the same in each language, but besides that, it’s usually too loud for you to have a conversation anyway. It’s hard enough trying to have a conversation with a new person who doesn’t know your level of language skill, let alone having that conversation in a noisy and crowded nightclub. The real fun comes from just going out and enjoying the whole experience.

It was really nice having someone let us know where to go and when to go and all that stuff. I definitely don’t regret going out while I was in Japan and I feel bad for some of my American friends who passed up the opportunity because it sure was a lot of fun. If you enjoy the club scene and you have the chance to go out in Japan, I wholeheartedly recommend it.

So tell me, have any of you gone out clubbing in Japan? How was your experience? For those who haven’t had the chance to, is it something that interests you? Let us know in the comments!

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So if you’ve got world domination in your sights, here’s some advice: invest in bacteria. Since we’re friends, I’ll throw in another tip for free: world domination doesn’t have to mean killing and maiming.

Case in point: Japan’s very own Yakult Honsha Co., Ltd. It’s the kingpin of the fermented milk world, with worldwide operations that rake in billions of yen every year. This, despite the fact there is no hard evidence that their products meet any of their health claims of maintaining better gut flora and health. They’re even listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, a veneer of respectability that fools the unsuspecting masses (all the easier to eat you, my dear).

But none of this would have been possible without bacteria – specifically, the shirota strain of Lactobacillus casei.

Humble Beginnings

Shirota Minoru was a young, idealistic graduate of Kyoto University who just wanted to help people poop regularly. Duly inspired by the writings of Ilya Mechnikov, a Russian scientist, he set out to develop a bacterial culture capable of surviving the harshly acidic human stomach to reach the intestines.

Incidentally, battery acid is approximately pH0.8.

It was no mean feat, but by golly in 1930 he did it!

By 1935, with the help of certain “friends,” the flagship beverage of the soon-to-be established Yakult Honsha Co., Ltd. hit the domestic market. These little bottles of sugary, shirota-enriched, fermented milky goodness hit the market – and signaled the start of a hostile takeover.

There was no end to the depths to which Yakult would stoop. In the 1960s they even mobilized the Yakult Lady army to deliver straight to peoples’ homes. Who could say no to these kindly obasans on bikes? Ka-ching! Another one has been suckered into the dark side.

Was Shirota part of it all, or was he blissfully unaware the whole time? What is certain is that slowly but surely, Yakult wrestled its way into the foreign market. It’s only a matter of time, folks, before they take over completely.

Yakult: we’s global.

Plan A: Fermented Milky Goodness

The more observant readers will have noticed that despite Yakult’s best efforts, their presence is glaringly missing certain parts of the globe. It’s certainly not from lack of trying though. Their other milky drinks and yogurt products just never reached the same dizzying heights of celebrity as their namesake drink.

Joie? Has anyone seen Joie outside of Japan?

How about Mil-mil? Ever heard of Mil-mil?

Sofuhl, anyone?

To all intents and purposes, the Hostile Takeover by Fermented Milk Plan hasn’t gone too smoothly. But like tigers that have tasted and now crave human flesh, so close have Yakult come to total world domination that they’re not about to stop now. Oh no, they’ve got a few more tricks up their sleeves.

Plan B: Fruits, Beans, and Roots

True to its beverage origins, Yakult also makes a whole lot of other drinks, such as fruit juice and soy bean milk.

Unfortunately for Yakult, and fortunately for us, these haven’t had much global success either. For example, Brazil was the first Western country where Yakult was sold. Given the sizable Japanese population in Brazil, Yakult’s popularity was inevitable, yet Tough Man just never quite caught on… what’s Tough Man, you ask? Exactly.

It’s got ginseng root for extra Tough-Man-ness.

Plan C: The Kitchen Sink

With world domination still not within their grasp, it seems as though Yakult has decided to just try everything it can think of. Literally.

Pharmaceutical drugs? Yakult have been there, done that with their Biolactis Capsules, and the chemotherapy drug Campto.

Professional sport? Yakult has a finger in that pie too: it owns one of Japan’s major baseball franchises, the Tokyo Yakult Swallows. Yakult’s also an official partner of the Saitama Broncos, a professional basketball club, and has been one of the partner companies of the FINA World Aquatics Championships since 2005.

Yakult even does cosmetics! I kid you not.

All that effort and still no world domination to show for it… Why, I could almost feel sorry for Yakult. Except I think that Yakult has just been toying with us, and has actually had its eye on a much bigger prize all along. The history section of Yakult’s official site has this simple, seemingly-innocuous entry for 2012:

Yakult launches space-based activities under Yakult Space Discovery Project.

Hmm… well, why stop at world domination when there’s a universe out there for the taking?

DISCLAIMERS:

1. Don’t take this post too seriously; it is meant to be tongue-in-cheek.
2. The Black Death claimed an estimated 25 million victims, or 30-60% of the population of Europe at the time. Also, Y. pestis wasn’t solely responsible; it piggybacked on fleas that piggybacked on rats that piggybacked on merchant ships.