a thousand ways to make pease porridge

Just in case it ever comes up, I guess, here's a quick primer on common Japanese teas:

The kind of green tea we usually drink in the US is called sencha, though it's the default tea in Japan so if you're there, they're probably just calling it ocha, or tea. If you're steeping plain green tea leaves in hot water, it's sencha. It's also generally what bottled/iced green tea is, unless otherwise specified.

(Sencha)

Matcha, on the other hand, is a powder that's made by grinding up tea leaves. It's generally made with very high-grade tea leaves that have not been rolled before grinding. This is whisked with a little bit of hot water during tea ceremonies to create a fairly thick, strong, frothy tea. This is often consumed with sweets to offset the bitterness. Culinary-grade matcha is also often used as an ingredient in snacks, desserts, lattes, etc.

Note: not all powdered tea is matcha! There is also a type of powdery "instant" sencha as well as a cheap semi-powdered kind that's popular at quick service restaurants. I believe it's usually made from leftover/broken fragments from the sencha production process. It tastes pretty much like normal sencha, not matcha. It just has a bit less flavor than normal sencha.

(Matcha)

Genmaicha is essentially sencha but with puffed, roasted rice in it. It looks like popcorn! It has a toastier flavor than sencha, but not a dark, tannic flavor like you get in most western teas. It tends to look a little more brownish-yellow when brewed.

(Genmaicha)

Hōjicha is a roasted tea, but again, it's lighter and nuttier tasting than typical black tea. You see it a lot in the fall, and it's super cozy. Tastes and looks similar to genmaicha when brewed, but darker and stronger.

(Hōjicha)

And finally, mugicha is a caffeine-free barley tea. It tastes... honestly, a little bit like corn...? Like if you just soaked popcorn in water for a while, maybe.

It's popular throughout Asia but tends to be a little less popular with tourists than the other teas. This is generally served cold, in my experience, and is supposed to be healthy for you when it's hot out.

(Mugicha)

There are way, way more kinds than this, but these are the ones you're probably going to see most often.

Personally, I usually drink iced sencha and hot genmaicha, but it's really up to your personal taste! You'll also see western-style black tea (kōcha) and oolong tea a lot in Japan, both hot and iced!

when you see creators you really love makin uhhh questionable business decisions

ooh, thank you! Dad's handling that part (he said something about that back in February, idk) because that's the part he's interested in, but I'll double-check that he knows!

Dad and I are going on at least two road trips this year, too! One big and one... well, barely a road trip haha. But we'll be gone a couple days.

The first is the baby one, and that's in June. It was kind of funny. I mentioned that I might be flying to California a little later this year (I usually go in like April-May) and my parents asked why. I told them that a movie I'd love to see in the theater was coming back as a Fathom event, but the closest place it'd be playing to them was Napa. (So... about a 3-hour drive.) So I would just stay here and maybe see it in NYC.

And my dad was like "oh, which movie?" and I said "the original Muppet movie" and he was like "LET'S GO TO NAPA."

So uhhh Dad and I are gonna drive down to wine country for a few days for the express purpose of seeing The Rainbow Connection on the big screen. But uh yeah we're also gonna drink a lot of alcohol haha.

And then in the early fall, before I come back to Philly, we're gonna gonna do another! We're going to... uh... *checks email* we're going back to Lassen (last year a road collapsed so we missed most of it during our PNW trip, RIP), then driving over to Yellowstone, which we love, and from there over to Cody. Then Devil's Tower, the Black Hills, Teddy Roosevelt, Badlands, Deadwood, Rocky Mountain, Wind Cave... damn, we're doing a lot... uhhh Denver because Dad wants to visit Casa Bonita and I want to go to Convergence Station, then we cut through Utah and Nevada to drive back. \o/

See, I can work from the road and my dad's retired. Mom doesn't like to travel, so she basically shoos us out of the house and sends us on these adventures lmao. Dad and I both know that our ability to do these intensive trips is probably dwindling (him due to age and me due to disability) so we're trying to squeeze as much in as we can haha.