Sencha Kakagawa is grown in China but made to Japanese specification, which is a more common arrangement than it sounds. After the Fukushima incident, several Japanese tea farmers set up estates in Zhejiang province and kept working the way they always had, so the processing and standards carried over even though the leaf isn't grown on Japanese soil. In the cup it pours a pale yellow-green and tastes light and smooth, with a delicate body that leans toward lemon and honey rather than anything grassy or heavy — a gentle introduction if you're used to sharper Japanese sencha. There's an old custom worth knowing if you want to drink it the traditional way: leave the leaves in the cup and keep topping up with water until the flavour finally fades, rather than removing them after one infusion. Some drinkers used to read the leaf pattern left at the bottom of the cup as a kind of fortune-telling, a small ritual that came with the tea itself.
For brewing, a teaspoon (about 5g) per cup is the right amount. Let boiled water sit for a couple of minutes so it cools to roughly 80-90 degrees, since fully boiling water will scald sencha's finer leaves, then steep for no more than 2 minutes — it turns bitter fast if left longer. It's good on its own, and a little lemon or honey suits it if you want to soften the edge further. Once you have it, keep it in an airtight container away from strong smells and heat, and it's best used within a year of buying rather than left to sit indefinitely.
