thesenchagamer's page

I had some Formosa Oolong a while ago. The taste was decent, but the smell was pretty bad. It reminded me of plastic or paint.

I just finished a cup of—you guessed it—sencha. Although I have cut back severely on my sencha consumption and started drinking more chocolate, bailey and orange tea ever since I found out I'm running out. Speaking of which, let's mix some nice coconut and chocolate tea together and have a cup of that.

It is also said that back in the dim mists of time before the oceans drank Atlantis and Arnold Schwarzenegger started running around with a sword that they had these things called phone books. :-) I don't know how they do things where you're from, but every year they drop a couple of them off at my apartment.

At any rate, if you can get your hands on a phone book that should help you deal with a nice old fogey type lady who might have neither a web site nor a google listing.

Shhh, I'm making excuses.

thesenchagamer wrote:

Oh no, I'm less than an inch from the bottom of my sencha tea-caddy. It's only been a month and a half, where did those 200g go? Now I have to start thinking about getting more already.

It's not a tea shop, but the owner of a Japanese store mostly dealing in tableware told me she was importing some tea from Japan (sencha, shincha, genmaicha, mugicha...), and she'd have it in store some time this month... The problem is, I don't know when, and a trip there takes at least 45 minutes each way and isn't exactly free either. I hope she's not going to sell it too fast if I don't get the timing right visiting, because I will try that shincha; it is the first—and supposedly best—sencha harvest of the year, so it'd be a shame to miss out.

I have heard rumors that a strange and mysterious device exists called ... a telephone. :-) You could use it to call the nice lady at the store and ask her when she expects her next shipment of tea in. ;-)

But she doesn't have a website, so I'd have to google her number and... well, she did actually say that she was expecting it towards the end of the month. Hopefully my supply shall last until then.

Oh no, I'm less than an inch from the bottom of my sencha tea-caddy. It's only been a month and a half, where did those 200g go? Now I have to start thinking about getting more already.

It's not a tea shop, but the owner of a Japanese store mostly dealing in tableware told me she was importing some tea from Japan (sencha, shincha, genmaicha, mugicha...), and she'd have it in store some time this month... The problem is, I don't know when, and a trip there takes at least 45 minutes each way and isn't exactly free either. I hope she's not going to sell it too fast if I don't get the timing right visiting, because I will try that shincha; it is the first—and supposedly best—sencha harvest of the year, so it'd be a shame to miss out.

Interesting. I think I shall take care not to buy dark/black tea cups for the future, unless they're still light in colour on the inside. Maybe I'll give the glass cups a chance some day, but the entire concept of hot tea in a glass cup is still strange to me. Plus I usually have cold fingers, so I like to heat my hands on my tea cup, and the glass ones just seem like they'd get much, much too hot to touch.

I have a question for you guys. I have been using a black mug for a while, but just switched to a light grey one where you can actually see the colour of the tea, and somehow the tea seems to be more enjoyable like this. Has anyone else experienced this, or is it just me being weird/delusional?

I merely said it was impractical, not impossible ;)

I've been working on potty training with the Young T-Rex of Summer, I was expecting more of a fight, but it's been going great, he has embraced both the toilet and the age old cliche of tree peeing

I'm envious, tree peeing is not practical when you don't have the proper equipment for it :(

That is something worth remembering :) I'm almost done with the cup though, and I only made the one, so next up I'll just go for something I know doesn't need any. That way I won't have to go to the kitchen either, because I'm lazy like that.

The tea of the moment is Ceylon with peach and apricot. I think I either let the bag steep for too long, or this is a tea that calls for sugar... Well, I'm trying to lose weight, so it's not getting any of that.

Other than that, I've got nothing much going on. The only new thing in my life is that two days ago I was coerced to do something active to lose weight rather than just replacing my soda consumption with tea, which is what I've been doing for the past two months or so. Oh, and I completed that pesky Zelda game that was eating up all my time last time I posted :)

Oh, something seems to be happening now. Shit, I better start looking into a character soon :D Maybe I should take a look at some herbalism in Heroes of the Wild...

I'm a little sad I've barely had any tea today. Stupid The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, getting me too engrossed to notice that I'm not eating or drinking.

Ouch, that's rough. It sounds like you were both at fault, but her more so than you.
It doesn't help much against reckless a#$%@@$s like the one you encountered, but the need to allow bicycles on the sidewalk to keep them away from cars makes me appreciate how nice it is to live in a country where the cities come equipped with infrastructure to accommodate bicycles.

I believe Evil can work in an otherwise non-evil party. At least our Legacy of Fire group made it through most of the first book being only slightly dysfunctional up until the point where the LN character finally turned evil when a devil(?) told her to kill her brother and she obeyed, except she failed and was soon overpowered. She then got the NE character to join her side by promising to do certain things to him, and... okay, so we ended last session being two characters short, but everyone had fun and our differences made for interesting party dynamics and good RP while it lasted.

As for tea... I'm not drinking any right now. Don't look at me like that, it's past midnight and I'm about to go to sleep soon.

For Iroh? I haven't read the occult classes, but I believe Kineticist is the one that's generally accepted to best represent benders.

How about Iroh from Avatar: The Last Airbender for a potential tea-focused monk? (I know there are probably other classes that describe him better, but...)

My focus right now is making a lab rat (ratfolk alchemist) for a Jade regent campaign due next month, and I'm super slow with backgrounds.
Also, I have a bad track record with RPG's on online forums, but it might be different with pathfinder and dedicated people...

Alright, I'm curious, so I might join. No promises :)

EDIT: Alright, I'll try to figure out a character, and if I do, I'm in.

I wonder if we'd all be forced to have tea-themed characters... >.>

Everyone is a geisha bard. Tea ceremonies are obligatory.

Man, it's been a long time since I had cold sencha. So good~~. And with sencha ice cubes as well, of course.
When summer really hits, maybe I should just make half a litre of tea, pour it in a plastic bottle, and shove the entire thing in the freezer. I once did see a convenience store in Japan selling frozen tea like that. I didn't buy it, and the heat had me regret it within ten minutes.

@Caineach Ohh, that sounds nice. I've only had mead once (homemade by The Alkenstarian who hangs around certain boards here), but I quite liked it. Maybe I should try and plant the idea of tea infused mead in her head sometime.

@Pan Looking at their site, I like that the Teasource actually tells you where the tea was grown. I have no clue if the sencha I'm currently drinking is actually grown in Japan or somewhere else. And my other teas... they're all blends with either oolong or keemun, but again I don't actually know where they were grown. If I lived in the US I might try the Teasource, but being in Europe I don't really feel like importing my tea from across the Atlantic :)
It's also a nice touch that they show you not just the tea leaves, but also a cup of the finished brew.

I don't even drink alcohol, but if I did, it'd be kombucha.

What does kombucha have to do with alcoho-... *looks at the wikipedia article*

See, I read kombucha and expected it to actually be kombu tea. Apparently what's known as kombucha in English has nothing to do with actual kombucha...

Yeah Pan, don't worry. They probably just got teetotalism and tea totalitarianism—the one true topic of this thread—mixed up. The words do sound similar, after all.

But what to use? The same flavor that you are now locked into until the tray is gone? Or do you brave the mixing? Some flavors don't go well together.

If your glass is big enough for one tray of ice cubes (as is the case with the glass I used yesterday), then being flavour locked won't be a problem. Having more ice cube trays with different flavours could also help alleviate the problem.

Green Tea Original Lemon from Pickwick, cooled down overnight and served in a glass of ice cubes.

(I am nowhere near my sencha, so flavoured green tea is a thing again)

Wait... I could pour tea in an ice cube mold and have tea ice cubes that won't dilute my tea as it melts...

T for teamwork!

So, here's something that just sort of appeared in my mind as I was pouring water over my new almond tea.

To the melody of the Pokémon theme:
Awesome tea! Gotta taste 'em all
(It's you and me)
I know it's my destiny
Awesome tea!
Oh, you're my best friend
In a world of tasty blend

Ahh, tomorrow is the day where I shall meet an old friend of mine that I haven't seen for two years, and to celebrate we're going to Perch's Tea Room in Copenhagen, a place where you get to pay 85 kr. (~$13) for one pot of tea. And so, I am currently looking at their website, wondering which amazing teas I should buy from their shop downstairs while we are there.
I'm thinking raspberry oolong, dark chocolate, bailey cream, maybe some coconut tea... Well, this looks awfully sweet all of it, doesn't it? Ohh, almond tea, that looks nice as well. And maybe I should take this opportunity to actually try the aforementioned genmaicha...

trails off and sips some sencha

thegreenteagamer wrote:

Just finished listening to a great podcast on tea by the super popular Stuff You Should Know. They're very thorough, cover the history, the science, the growing process, the health benefits (and the controversy behind it). Great stuff! I even learned a little about Matcha that I didn't know.

You should link it.

I, on the other hand, should go to Japan. And also be terrible, even though I'd try my best. 'Cause: YATTA!

(Also, I can count to ten and call someone a fool. And that is my Japanese.)

If you need a halfbaked translator, I could use another trip to Japan. It's been a while for me.

I am a Britlandshirer, so tea is a fundamental part of my culture & upbringing. Not drinking the stuff would mark me as a) weird and b) probably foreign. I am weird, of course, but tea-drinking helps to camouflage that.

Gen-mai cha is nice. Must try to get hold of some. There's the roasted stuff as well - can't remember what that's called, though...

You mean houjicha? (I should totally know this, but I forgot and couldn't for the life of me recall its name, so I had to resort to google to find the name...)

I haven't tried genmaicha yet, but maybe I should. If it turns out I'm not a fan, then at least it was cheap. And if I do like it, then as an added bonus it's still cheap. Win-win, really.

According to the package there were actual berries in there, and then they used aromas to emulate the cupcake flavour. I'm not even kidding.

I found a thread about it on reddit.

I've actually tried that! My friend and I bought it as a joke because we thought it sounded really rather gross. It wasn't really gross as such, but it's not good either. It has a weird buttery kind of aftertaste but otherwise tastes just like normal strawberry tea.

So, I've just come back from the store where I saw two weird Lipton abominations: blueberry cupcake tea and strawberry cupcake green tea.

Wrong as it sounds, I was somewhat curious as to what they were like, but being sort of reluctant to buy bagged tea as it is* I reminded myself not to buy random stuff that I don't even expect to like.

Seriously though, cupcake flavoured tea? Is this really an actual thing that's a thing, or is it just Lipton being weird?

Meanwhile, this Pickwick vanilla chai is pretty nice.

*I'm thinking of switching to buying more quality loose leaf teas and move most of the bagged ones that I've already amassed at home over to my tiny stash here at the boyfriend's.

Hope you guys like peeing all the time.

Well yeah, tea causes the body to expel more water. I used to have a rule against me drinking tea during RP sessions for this exact reason, but then I realised that I drink too much soda, so it's since been revised. So far, no real difference in number of toilet breaks.

greentea-dono, I received the call for assembly.

... What's this, inflammatory speech about tea? Well, I'm sure whatever beverages you guys prefer probably link to cancer.

On the other hand, green tea might prevent cancer.
And in a world where everything is attributed with causing cancer, a "might prevent" seems pretty good.

I personally never add sugar or milk, unless I'm drinking bog-standard tea, but that's just upbringing/personal preference.

I'm like this for the most part. I'll only add milk and/or sugar if I don't like the tea, if it's Indian chai (which is supposedly meant to be had like that), or if I just feel like switching it up. But in the majority of cases I just drink it as it is.

Welp, I am away from my sencha. It is either Pickwick, Lipton, or existence without tea.

Chancing the Pickwick, although it's with jasmine and I'm usually not a huge fan of that... I really need to stock my boyfriend's place with something better.

thegreenteagamer wrote:

And TL's love of sweet tea has a use. Sweet green tea is a great way to expand the horizons of one new to the drink, in my opinion.

The best green tea, is green tea ice cream.

(And/or greenteagamer, and/or Green Tea Gamer. :D)

Green tea ice cream as in matcha ice cream? That stuff is so good.

I see some people have mentioned Arizona. I tried a bottle of Arizona green tea and honey once. Pure sugar is less sickeningly sweet than that stuff. I was not impressed.

Sencha is the best. I've been without it for some months, so I've been turbo-drinking it since Saturday last week when I got my hands on it again. I'm 4/5 through the 50-piece bag of tea filters that I bought for it.

At some point when I've made up for all the sencha I haven't drunk I'll probably go back to also drinking stuff like rooibosh with vanilla, white tea with chocolate, and the occasional black teas (I had some bailey cream tea at my GM's place yesterday, which was pretty nice). I probably won't touch flavoured green teas as long as I'm in possession of my precious.