Happy Lemon Lemon black tea: Textbook mediocre black tea. Tastes like Lipton, and it probably is. On the plus side, the drinks contains an entire lemon, sliced into wedges. But the overall effect is black tea I can easily make at home. Good thing it was free (from the buy one get on free promotion during Happy Lemon’s opening weekend in Berkeley). 2.0/5.0
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Happy Lemon Milk tea with pudding: An all around solid milk tea. Well balanced, and the textures of the pudding is good too. Happy to have Happy Lemon close to home. 3.5/5.0
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Happy Lemon Ube Green Tea Smoothie with Rock Salt Crema: Ube, green tea, and salted cream seemed like an unlikely combination, but one that I felt of all chains, Happy Lemon could probably pull off. This smoothie tastes much more of ube than green tea, and with its vivid Grimace purple color, it would be hard to know that it contained any matcha at all. The ube slush was rich and very filling, with a fairly mild flavor that's still immediately identifiable as ube. This was probably the best use of the rock salt crema I've had, which I've been s... (read more) 3.5/5.0
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Heart of Tea Peach tea: Purchased from the nice vending machine at work, this bottle of tea stands out with its well designed packaging. The drink has a round herbal black tea flavor that I enjoyed, but the peach flavor was too sweet overall. If they had an unsweetened version, I would probably purchase it again. Until then, probably best to stick with Honest Tea (the barely sweetened kind in the glass bottles, not the plastic ones post-Coca-Cola acquisition). 3.0/5.0
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Hio Ice Cream Green Tea Milk Ice Cream: Even before I arrived in Japan, I had bookmarked this modern ice cream shop in Jiyugaoka to try for Tasty Snacking. Unfortunately, it's a bit far away from central Tokyo and I never got a chance to make it out there before COVID hit. I didn't realize, though, that you can actually find their ice cream at certain grocery stores. I went for the classic green tea flavor, which has specks of dark green mixed in. While I was hoping for a strong bitter matcha flavor, it actually disappointingl... (read more) 3.0/5.0
icecream japanese queensisetan hioicecream green tea milk ice cream 3.0 matchaHonest Tea honey green tea: From the Just a Tad Sweet line, this herbal tea has 19g of sugar in a bottle. Initially, it tastes of honey, but it finishes with a slightly bitter green tea flavor. Overall, a bit too sweet still for my taste. 3.0/5.0
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