matchairi genmaicha

or "brown rice green tea with added powdered tea."

on the way back from the interview in norfolk yesterday, i stopped to check out a couple bookstores way down granby street. there was a little japanese grocery beside one of them; instead of books, i wound up with tea. (and, incidentally, some really yummy chewy ginger candies!)

(one of the bookstores is pretty promising for supplying the cheap used novel habit... even if i've recently rediscovered the possibility of actually checking things out from the library and honestly probably don't need to buy any more books until i've read some of the ones i have. i still miss mckay's, though.)

trying out the tea this morning, i got curious over why this green tea's actually green whereas most of the green tea i buy is more the brown variety. wikipedia to the rescue! japanese green teas in general and genmaicha in specific. turns out that what i have is mostly the same stuff as the canister of "green tea with toasted rice" i had from republic of tea... but with a little matcha--the powdered, bright green green tea used for tea ceremonies and for the characteristic "green tea flavor" on things like ice cream that are not tea--mixed in for flavor and color. i like.

the label on the tea i bought is mostly in japanese (i bought it based on the illustration on the front of the bag), so i'm a little extra-happy that wikipedia had the characters, too. 茶, cha, tea, is familiar hanzi from chinese - i know a very few of 'em!