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gyokuro

This non-sweet matcha treat is one of our new favorite Kyoto snack souvenirs【Taste test】

Umami no Mi Gyokuro is waiting right outside the Shinkansen gate at Kyoto Station.

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Häagen-Dazs Japan’s 35th anniversary Green Deep Tea ice cream is no ordinary matcha dessert

Amazingly high-quality tea leaves are the key ingredient in this milestone flavor.

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Japan’s Oi Ocha green tea keeps going upscale with new bottled matcha costing 1,000 yen a bottle

Third premium offering in line of matcha is set to please the palate while hurting the wallet.

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Twist-cap matcha is the freshest bottle of tea you’ll ever get at a Japanese convenience store

Clever design lets you easily prepare a cup of tea just before you drink it.

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Japan’s finest green tea, now available in bottled form at an eye-popping price

Japan may have invented the tea ceremony, but that doesn’t mean that every occasion to drink the beverage is considered a solemn cultural experience. Modern residents of Japan don’t generally have the time for a highly ritualized brewing and sipping of a cup of tea, and are instead far more likely to satisfy their cravings with an inexpensive bottle of green tea bought from a vending machine or convenience store.

But swinging the pendulum back the other way is beverage company Ito En, which is releasing a super-premium bottled green tea made with Japan’s highest quality leaves, and an eye-popping price to match.

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  • Nov 21, 2014

Green tea ramen? Of course we had to give it a try!【Taste Test】

There’s no denying that we love our ramen here in Japan. The dish is so well-loved, in fact, that it can be called one of the national comfort foods of Japan, and one of the factors that make ramen so intriguing is the fact that there are so many variations of it across Japan, from the miso-based ramen of Hokkaido in the north to the pork-stock based tonkotsu ramen of Kyushu in the south.

Surrounded as we are by all the different ramens served at countless shops throughout the country, it’s rare that we see a ramen that surprises us with its originality, but when we heard about a ramen with a soup containing stock made from green tea — and expensive gyokuro tea at that —  we have to say we were positively fascinated, and we knew we had to try it ourselves. Green tea ramen, here we come!

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