Tea & drinks
Nihoncha (Japanese tea)
日本茶
29 varieties
Japanese tea is said to have grown up around one defining choice: steaming the leaf to halt oxidation, a departure from the pan-firing method that arrived from China and once dominated, with steamed processing said to have taken hold widely from the Edo period on. Shading the bushes from sunlight — the technique behind gyokuro and tencha — is said to concentrate umami, while the fog of mountain valleys and the climate of each basin are said to have split the tea into distinct regional characters. And in the lineage of bancha, tea made from the coarser leaves and stems left after the fine picking, there's a thread of everyday wisdom in not letting anything go to waste.
Fermented and bancha teas4
Green tea10
- Fukamushi Sencha深蒸し煎茶sencha steamed for extra long
- Genmaicha玄米茶green tea blended with roasted rice
- Gyokuro玉露tea shaded before harvest for a mellow umami
- Hojichaほうじ茶roasted green tea
- Kabusechaかぶせ茶briefly shaded tea between sencha and gyokuro
- Kamairicha釜炒り茶pan-fired green tea
- Kukicha (Karigane)茎茶（かりがね）Kukicha — stem tea, prized as karigane from gyokuro
- Mecha芽茶tea made from curled bud tips
- Sencha煎茶Japan's everyday unshaded green tea
- Tamaryokucha玉緑茶（グリ茶）curled 'guricha' green tea
By growing region10
- Ise-cha伊勢茶MieMie's top producer of kabusecha
- Kagoshima-cha鹿児島茶Kagoshima Minamikyushu (Chiran, Ei)Japan's top producer by volume, multi-cultivar
- Kagoshima no Tencha鹿児島の碾茶KagoshimaKagoshima tencha — the newly leading matcha-material region
- Nishio no Matcha西尾の抹茶Aichi NishioNishio matcha — Aichi's registered matcha brand region
- Sayama-cha狭山茶Saitama'the taste settled by Sayama'
- Shizuoka-cha静岡茶Shizuokaa prefecture of contrasting tea landscapes
- Uji-cha宇治茶Kyoto UjiKyoto's shaded-cultivation tea region
- Ujitawara宇治田原Kyoto Ujitawarabirthplace of the modern green tea method
- Ureshino-cha嬉野茶Saga Ureshinohome of curled tamaryokucha
- Yame-cha八女茶Fukuoka YameFukuoka's straw-shaded gyokuro region
Matcha and powdered tea3
Other styles2
View all Nihoncha (Japanese tea) on the map
Before you go
The dishes behind chain flavors
The flavors of national chains are said to trace back to dishes from particular places. Pick a chain to see the dish behind it.
nana's green tea — matcha and Japanese tea café chain
nana's green tea builds its café menu around matcha and Japanese tea, part of the tea-drinking culture tied to tea-growing regions like Uji.