I always thought green tea was Chinese as well, but I’m quite willing to be proven wrong since I have no idea where I came up with that idea to begin with. UPDATE: this little “history of” thing suggests that green tea originated in China around 2700 BC, and was exported to Japan in the 6th century AD.

My tea tastes good enough to me- however, I’ve had green tea at a couple of moderately expensive Chinese and Japanese restaurants, and I always thought it tasted sort of like throwing some oats in hot water; not exactly a taste sensation 🙂 Mine tastes kinda like that.

But I think I’m overheating the water, and certainly I’m not spending $6 a cup (I think my whole box of green tea bags was no more than $10). Certainly my tea isn’t the incredible bright green those pictures on that site showed- more sort of a light beer brown, which I think is probably a result of overheating.

I thought some of the tea pots looked kind of interesting, and they cost about half as much as 100 grams of tea, so they sounded like a bargain to me. I might get one of those pots and try some “loose” green tea some day, but first I’d have to find some source a little less over the top than that place I linked to. Five bucks for 100 grams sounds more reasonable to me 😉