Konbu (or kombu) cha...

[Drax]

... depending on how you want to romanize こんぶ茶...

Anyway, that's not the important part. I haven't seen much talk about this anywhere, so I thought I'd ask -- anybody have any before? Apparently こんぶ is a type of seaweed...

A friend of mine picked up a canister of it while flying back from Korea (and stopping at the airport in Tokyo). It looks like it's the type of "dissolves in water" tea. But I wanted to ask around before I tried it

[teashionista]

I think what you're talking about is some sort of a dried and pulverized sweet tea (looks like little green pellets?) If that's the case, I've had it: my sister-in-law is Japanese, and sometimes she brings unorthodox teas from her visits home Indeed, it dissolves in water--the one I had was sweetened. I wasn't a huge fan of it--it didn't taste like tea, had cloudy appearance, and made me curious of its origins (which I assumed to be a laboratory)... By the time we got around to trying it, my SIL wasn't around to translate what was on the package, so I don't have any details. Of course, we might be talking about totally different teas

Btw, kombucha is a type of microorganism formation that thrives on sweet tea. In order to make kombucha tea you must obtain the starter (some call it "mother")--a rubber-like slippery substance. I'm pretty sure that's not what your friend picked up

Do share your experience with it, and post some pics!!!

[teashionista]

Drax, I found some info on konbu: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konbu

It is indeed seaweed... Now I'm even more curious about your tea

[Ritva]

Maiko sells konbu tea: http://www.maiko.ne.jp/english/shopping/konbu_tea.htm
They also talk about natural sea salt in the tea... Sounds a bit strange. Even stranger, they have a konbu-ume plum tea! Ume plums are sour and salty plums often used in rice balls and I can't quite imagine how they would taste in tea...