#bancha

san nen bancha, a wonderful calming low caffeine japanese tea. its one of the teas you can drink anytime, even before bed, because you dont have to worry if youll be able to fall asleep or not. the tea not only looks, but also tastes like autumn. .

I'm still unemployed, so bonus streams for a bit! Let's really burn the candle at both ends, eh? Some Pikmin, some Final Fantasy XVI, and some...classic games? What a weird mix!

Today we prepare Hojicha Light Roast 🍃

This single-origin hojicha will delight both roasted tea lovers and green tea drinkers with its multilayered taste and with the inviting golden green hue of its leaves.

for the prompt

Ty <333

Gray

WC: 314

TWs: mention of death? Nothing too bad

*

People didn’t normally like Bancha. She was loud, or didn’t know when to keep her mouth shut, or forgot important things, or wouldn’t stop talking about stuff nobody wanted to hear. She was used to it.

Jinx wasn’t like that, though. When she first met him, he didn’t cut her off a single time, didn’t complain about her being too loud. He said he liked listening to her talk about anything and everything.

Bancha hardly left his side after that, and they grew inseparable. Jinx didn’t talk much, but Bancha was more than happy filling the empty air. And when he did talk, Bancha took care to listen, to return the favor.

Things started to change when his momma died.

If people in their tribe didn’t like Bancha, then they hated Jinx. Because he was half human, because his magic was weird, because he barely looked like his momma and didn’t look like anyone else there.

When Jinx’s momma died, they made him leave.

Bancha went with him.

He didn’t want her to, but she insisted. Nobody here liked her anyway, and her oarents had too many kids to count, they wouldn’t miss the one without any of the color or markings that made her theirs. Jinx was marked different, with deep brown skin, gray eyes that looked like pitch in the dark, and thick hair such dark a gray it was almost black, but Bancha was just blank. White skin, white hair, pale eyes. Like an undyed piece of cloth. Maybe, in a way, neither of them belonged.

So they left.

They spent their nights curled up under the foliage, limbs all tangled up together. And when they found a place to settle down, Bancha stared into Jinx’s gray eyes and realized she didn’t miss what she left behind.

Bancha is considered a low grade of Japanese tea, but not all bancha is created equal, and just because a tea is low grade doesn’t mean it is less tasty.

Pictured here is a particularly high-quality example of bancha.  The leaves here are almost entirely whole.  The intact nature of the leaves though is just one of many characteristics to look for...a finely-broken tea that is fresh and has been stored properly can still be very tasty.

Because bancha is a lower grade, companies that sell it are often not messing around...there are plenty of examples of bad sencha out there, especially in the U.S., but it’s harder to find a truly bad bancha.