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Culture, Drink, Food, Green tea, Matcha, Photography, Postaday, tea shop, Tourism, uji matcha
When we stopped at a tea shop in Kyoto to taste traditional Uji Matcha the local specialty green tea, I thought ‘How different can it be?”. Believe me, it was different…..soupy and very bitter! And this was Usu-cha (the weaker version)!! Thankfully the sweet accompaniments – including a painted rice cookie - traditionally served to balance the bitterness, were delicious and very pretty to look at 
Don’t forget to check out other interpretations of ‘foreign‘ here.
Thank you for visiting and have a great weekend
Isn’t it amazing that wherever you travel in the world, sharing tea or coffee is such a social occasion
It is! Did it all start in China I wonder? Can’t begin to tell you how much I missed good coffee in Japan.
Hey Madhu,
This green tea certainly looks much different that green tea in America to me! Certainly a nice submission to the weekly challenge. Thanks for sharing your photograph and story!
Nate
It looked and tasted different from ANY green tea I have had, even in China!! Thank you for stopping by to comment
I’m a coffee drinker (a big big one) and almost never drink tea – but I like this color… ‘smile’
The taste matched the colour LeDrake
Congratulations! You’ve nailed it! So Japanese, so simple, so … foreign.
Oh thank you Meredith. I did taste more strange things like sweet potato and Wasabi icecreams, but this was the prettiest picture
…. strange combination, that’s for sure! No, the tea ceremony is so quintessentially Japanese that a tray of green tea, with its proper accompaniments is just perfect!
Wasabi and Sweet potato were two separate flavours, but strange nevertheless
Singly, or in combination, strange tastes to our palate, I agree
Looks YUMMY!!!
The look is VERY deceptive, I can assure you
Wow, I am so glad for your photo. The tea looks sweet and minty to me and the cookie is so gorgeous. I would love it.
The cookie really was gorgeous and I was sad I had bitten off a piece before I remembered to click this. We meant to buy some of those, but never managed to find similar anywhere else. But the tea was anything but….couldn’t finish it
If it tastes that odd its probably very good for you? if all else fails it looks pretty
Of course! The cookie was delicious, but too pretty to eat
This makes a pretty presentation regardless of the taste!
It does. But the Japs excel in making even everyday food look beautiful! Every meal was so artistically presented, we would hesitate to dig our chopsticks into them
It looks so milky green.
Not very appealing, or perhaps it was our preconceived notions of how green tea should look
Beautiful photo. After the first bitter taste of tea, I would have stuck to the cookies.
I did
Nice!!
Our neighbors have had a few Japanese Foreign Exchange students who have brought *sweets* as gifts for their hosts. It always amazes me how un-sweet their treats are in comparison to ours!
Me too. Some eats we bought that appeared sweet and sticky were quite tasteless and bland and in some cases very salty! We gave up the visual method of identifying food very soon
Thank you for your visit and comment.
It’s such a pretty tea. Too bad the flavor didn’t quite match.
Photogenic if nothing else
We kind of got used to the discrepancy between appearance and taste – or rather our expectation of taste – after a while.
That is really green. I might have to think twice about trying that, but congrats on being brave and doing so.
Bilious isn’t it? Wasn’t brave enough to finish it.
I’m pretty game about trying new foods/drinks, but bitter is bitter. Not what I call a relaxing, soothing, comfortable to the palate drink. Good choice for foreign.
Absolutely not! Thank you Lynne
Very…….green !
Strange that if the same thing had been served as soup, pea/spinach soup perhaps, we would have been gushing about the well preserved colour! This was as yucky as it looked
At least you tried it- was a beautiful colorful presentation- right down to the matching painted cookie AND what an apropos picture!
I love green tea, but this looks really strange. I hope it’s really healthy, to make it worthwhile drinking.
We were told it was, and slimming as well! The latter might be the only reason I might want to consume it
Wow !
You had authentic Japanese tea.
I have not , yet.
You live in Japan and still haven’t had authentic Japanese tea??? Makes me feel a lot better about all the ‘Indian’ things I haven’t done
It looks so beautiful for a bitter tasting tea! Must be a bummer. What were those delicate looking green leaf and flower things? i’m assuming cookies.
They were sweets of some kind, mainly sugar and starch I think. The other one was the lightest wafer like cookie I have ever tasted. Pleasure to have you visit and comment Deb
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somebody already said it – the presentation looks lovely! the taste may have been a bit unusual, but it was definitely worth it for this photo. thanks for ordering it
Good I didn’t know how it tasted before I ordered it. Glad you enjoyed it
Painted rice cookie… I don’t think I have the heart to eat someone’s art! It looks beautiful
I too loved the delicate brush strokes. Couldn’t find any to bring back home. probably didn’t look in the right places
I agree with others above. The presentation looks really nice, but I think I would have liked a raincheck on the tea…..
That would have been a wise decision
That said I did enjoy their standard green tea, even the powdered version in sachets in our hotel rooms!
…it does look bitter! Reminds me of the “fake” food we used to make out of clay [mud] when we were kids and paint it in various colors. Beautiful to look at!
All their food is beautiful Marina. Sometimes more beautiful to look at than to taste
Prep. should take an enormous amount of time!!
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The presentation of the tea is beautiful. Drinking it must have been quite a surprise
Great interpretation of the theme!
It was! Thank you Meg
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I enjoy green tea but if it was that bitter I would be surprised too. The colors on the traditional Japanese plate and the green tea color are very eye appealing.
The thicker texture was surprising too Isadora. But yes the presentation was impeccable
another friend of mine was recently in Japan for a Haiku trip and she missed good coffee as well…great take on the theme Madhu
Thank you Jo. Cafes were few and far between, and I hated vending machine coffee – with its umpteen permutations/ combinations – after a while
Agreed on the vending machines.
Like you, I loved Kyoto very much and this beautiful photo speaks to the calm we enjoyed there.
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Soupy tea??? That’s the first I hear of it…. bitter things are supposed to be healthy, what are the health benefits of this one?
Another green tea post! (Travel with Kat). I like green tea but I’m not sure about this one – definitely very foreign….
interesting excurs about green bitterness …
Very interesting. The painted cookie is gorgeous!
Green thea, may be very bitter because using mint leaves
This looks good!
I just love their attention to presentation and making things look nice. Almost everything I bought in Japan was nicely wrapped after I paid for them.
Great photo, Madhu!
Interesting, and unexpected!
The cookies look yum, but the green -very suspicious
! But it must have been a fun exotic experience (discounting the bitterness!)
It’s almost a shame to eat those lovely creations.
It does look foreign yet irresistible. I am drawn what is unique and mysterious. You bet, I will try one if I see it.