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No need to wait until winter ends to start enjoying the cherry blossoms<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n There\u2019s no season Japan looks forward to with more excitement than spring. Not only does spring mean the end of months of \u201cYou know what? Maybe I\u2019ll just stay home all day in my kotatsu<\/a>\u201d-level coldness, it also means the return of the cherry blossoms<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Of course, we\u2019ve still got a couple of months left until the sakura<\/strong> start to blossom, but green tea maker\/Gunpla creative partner<\/a> Ito En<\/strong> is ready to give us a taste, literally, of cherry blossom fun right away, with two new teas that each make use of Japan\u2019s most famous flora<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Staring things off is Oi Ocha Sakura Green<\/strong>, a new member of the best-selling Oi Ocha branch of the Ito En family tree. Part of the sub-brand-within-a-sub-brand Oi Ocha Pure line, which, somewhat contradictorily, is where Ito En gets a little playfully creative with its Oi Ocha ingredients. Oi Ocha Sakura Green is made with salt-preserved sakura tree leaves<\/strong> (yes, they\u2019re edible) and is brewed using green tea leaves specially selected for their strong umami and low-astringency characteristics<\/strong>. Ito En says the result is an elegant flavor that evokes thoughts of eating a sakura mochi sweet dumpling, which, if taken literally, would be extraordinarily sweet for Japanese green tea, so the reality is more likely a gentle and relaxing bit of salty sweetness which would make for an excellent beverage to pair with an actual dessert.<\/p>\n Also making its debut is the Matcha Love Sakura Matcha<\/strong>. This shake-and-drink line of green tea actually got its start within Ito En\u2019s North American division, but has since made its way to Japan too, and the label\u2019s Japanese-language text bills it as being \u201cjust a little bit sweet.\u201d Once again, sakura are on the ingredient list, but in this case it\u2019s the flowers themselves, preserved with salt, that go into the production process, not the leaves<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Despite the stylish ingredients, the Oi Ocha Sakura Green is priced at an affordable 194 yen (US$1.30), and the Matcha Love Sakura Matcha is just a bit more, 270 yen. Both go on sale January 19 and will be available for the limited, vaguely defined time period of \u201cthis spring.\u201d<\/p>\n Source: Press release<\/em> No need to wait until winter ends to start enjoying the cherry blossoms. There\u2019s no season Japan looks forward to with more excitement than spring. Not only does spring mean…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3933\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/soranews24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2026\/01\/sm-2.jpg?w=289\")
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\nTop image: Pakutaso<\/a><\/em>
\nInsert images: Press release<\/em>
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