ngothuyhuong– Author –
ngothuyhuong
Huong Ngo is a Vietnamese writer who has studied Japanese language and culture for over five years. She previously lived and worked in Japan for three years, gaining firsthand experience of Japanese society, culture, and everyday life.
She writes about Japanese food, culture, and travel, while also enjoying the opportunity to explore cuisines and traditions from around the world. Her interests include traveling, discovering local foods, and learning about the cultural stories behind them. She is also a longtime Doraemon fan, with a particular fondness for dorayaki.
Her experience living in Japan and background in Japanese studies inform her approach to exploring Japan beyond the most familiar tourist destinations.
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Type
Tencha (碾茶)
Open a bag of matcha and you find a silky green powder. Open a bag of the tea it comes from, and you might not recognize it as tea at all. The leaves are flat, thin and papery, more like flakes of dried seaweed than the dark needles of s... -
Type
Funmatsucha (粉末茶)
At many conveyor-belt sushi restaurants in Japan, every seat comes with the same small kit: a stack of cups, a hot-water tap built into the counter, and a little jar of bright green powder with a tiny scoop. You add a scoop, press the ta... -
Type
Konacha (粉茶)
Sit down at a sushi counter in Tokyo, and before you have even opened the menu, a tall, heavy cup lands in front of you. The tea inside is a deep, slightly cloudy green, very hot and pleasantly strong. Most visitors drink it without a se... -
Type
Shiraore (白折)
Browse the tea shelves of a shop in Fukuoka or Saga and you'll often find a bag that looks almost too plain beside the polished gyokuro tins. It holds pale, flat little stems instead of dark, needle-like leaves, and its label carries two... -
Type
Karigane (雁ヶ音)
Walk into an old tea shop in Kyoto and you'll find gyokuro, the shaded tea Japan treats as one of its finest, priced and packed with care. Look a little further along the shelf and there's often a quieter bag nearby. It's full of pale gr... -
Type
Kukicha (茎茶)
Most Japanese green teas are judged by their leaves. Kukicha (茎茶) turns that idea around. It's a Japanese green tea made mainly from the stems and leaf stalks of the tea plant, the parts that finishers sort away when they want a neat, ... -
Type
Matcha-iri genmaicha (抹茶入り玄米茶)
Pour a cup of plain genmaicha and it comes out thin, clear, and pale yellow-green, calm and unassuming in the cup. Pour a cup of matcha-iri genmaicha next to it, and the difference is obvious before you even taste it: a deeper, cloudier ... -
Type
Genmaicha (玄米茶)
Genmaicha (玄米茶) is a Japanese green tea blended with roasted rice. Producers mix bancha or sencha with roasted rice, usually in close to equal parts. The rice is soaked, steamed, and roasted until golden brown. Some of it pops open du... -
Type
Karigane Hōjicha (雁が音ほうじ茶)
Karigane Hōjicha (雁が音ほうじ茶) is a roasted Japanese tea. Producers make it from karigane: the stems, stalks, and leaf veins they sort out while processing gyokuro and other high-grade, shade-grown tea. It starts from gyokuro-grade pl... -
Type
Kaga Bōcha (加賀棒茶)
Kaga Bōcha (加賀棒茶) is a roasted Japanese tea made almost entirely from tea stems rather than leaves. It comes from Kanazawa, in Ishikawa Prefecture. Dozens of local roasting houses there turn separated tea stems into a naturally sweet...
