About this site

Sencha, gyokuro, matcha, hojicha, genmaicha, bancha — this is a place to learn Japanese green tea, brew it properly, and work out what you like.

It started in 2026 as a sister site to TEA's BIBLE, a black-tea site running since 1996. Different leaf, same approach.

Cultivar registration numbers, regional output, composition figures, labeling rules — anything that can be settled by looking it up is written from the issuing body's own material rather than from explainer articles or shop copy.

Secondary sources disagree with each other more often than you would expect. This site has already had to correct a passage that followed a retailer's account and ended up contradicting the prefecture's own publication.

Numbers come with their conditions. Composition figures for a brewed cup depend on leaf weight, water temperature, volume and time — quoted without those, they are not comparable. Regional rankings change from year to year, so the crop year is always named.

Voluntary industry standards and legal requirements are kept apart. When something is described as a rule, it matters whether breaking it is illegal or merely off-convention.

Where the evidence does not settle it, the text says so. Folklore is labeled as folklore, and matters of taste as matters of taste.

Some of the images on this site are generated rather than photographed. The generated ones carry a small "Generated" mark in the lower right corner.

A generated image is not a record of anything, so none of them are used as evidence. They do not appear in the comparisons where the colour or the shape is itself the claim — the depth and cloudiness of the liquor, the shape of the leaf. Where the mark appears, the image is there to help you recognise which tea is being discussed, or to illustrate how something like shade growing works.

They are being replaced with photographs as those are taken. The mark comes off any image that has been replaced.

When something published here turns out to be wrong, it gets fixed. Cultivar registration numbers, regional output rankings and an explanation of what shading does to the leaf have all been corrected since launch.

If you spot something, the address below reaches us — a pointer to the primary source is the most useful thing you can send.

Figures for caffeine, catechins and the rest come from published composition tables and are offered as general information. They are not medical advice.

For anything that depends on your own situation — a condition, a medication, pregnancy — ask a medical professional rather than a tea site.