If you're ever looking at tea shops that sell specialty Japanese teas you can find this style of tea, made from plants grown from seed pollinated by other nearby bushes as opposed to cuttings from a known cultivar, it's refered to as zairai or 在来.<p>They are often interesting and much more "rough" teas with varying but generally mellow flavors and often processed to contain more hard materials like stems and veins as they would have been when it was still hand rolled. It definitely helps one imagine how tea must have been in those eras, though they still simmered the leaves with the water until the 1700s
When I went to Japan last time I asked about tea places and people would tell me "we don't drink tea outside, we drink it at home". I also remember an article a few years ago about dying Japanese tea tradition, somewhat related to the proliferation of instant tea dispersal machines and those 7-11 tea walls.<p>What I would like to know is why contrary to Japan, there are Tea farms of all sizes everywhere. There are dozens of tea shops opening, and if you walk through Taipei you will see plenty of tea shops, tea places in every corner of the city.<p>Why is that? Is it just the result of marketing and consumerism?
I kinda have this idea that while psychedelics like LSD are the easiest to catch a ride with, it is specifically tea that can get you furthest. When I was reading "Dream of the Red Chamber" some of the descriptions of tea drinking were really psychedelic, like being transported into a different realm of heavenly purity that permeates everything with effortless perfection, etc. Certainly <i>I</i> never experienced anything like this with any drug.
It's a little embarrassing that they didn't survive and now need to be revived. I mean there are 21 businesses in Japan that are over a thousand years old!<p><a href="https://www.theceomagazine.com/business/management-leadership/japan-oldest-businesses/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theceomagazine.com/business/management-leadershi...</a>