maiji: Taiwanese white tea with sakura daifuku

[image set: 1) Photo of small handmade ceramic cup with a handle with tea next to a speckled white kyusu (Japanese side-handled teapot) resting on a round green mat. There is a small dish holding a pink sakura daifuku mochi with a pickled sakura flower on top. 2) Closeup of sakura daifuku mochi with a bite taken out of it, showing the white paste filling with more pickled sakura flowers inside.]Recent tea and snack time! In our household we have... a lot of tea. So it took me a while but at long last, near the beginning of this month, I finally worked my way to a point where I could feel justified in opening a new package!! This is Pre-Qingming Red Jade T-18 Curled White Tea from Taiwan Tea Crafts. It surprised me the moment I opened the bag. It smelled like sweet berries! I don't usually drink white tea, and my quick online check told me that white tea can be steeped longer and at lower temperatures, so I used 80 degrees celsius. The tea had a sweet and light sense and fragrance like honey to me, and it actually reminded me of White Tip Oolong which I thought was super intriguing. On a subsequent teatime, it made me think of a really good milk tea. And then when I had it on this day, there was an interesting undertone or background scent that brought to mind the fragrance of incense. It's such a lovely and interesting tea!Here I'm enjoying it with one of my favourite daifuku from Natural Japaneats, which I haven't had in a long time because I never seem to be able to get to one of the markets they are vending at. The sakura is super pretty to look at, and the taste is a fun blend of sweet and mildly-salty-sour (from the pickled sakura), plus the soft lumpy dumpling-like and chewy texture of the mochi skin. So yummy!The mini cup is part of a cup-and-saucer set with a Tale of Genji themed design by Secret Teatime, and the kyusu is by Yoshikawa Satoshi from MIKA.