A coarse, everyday Japanese green tea made from the lower quality leaves and stems of the tea plant.
From Japanese 'ban' (common/ordinary) plus 'cha' (tea). Bancha is the everyday tea of common people in Japan, as opposed to premium teas like matcha or sencha.
Bancha represents a beautiful linguistic truth: even 'cheap' or 'common' tea had enough cultural importance to get its own word—it meant something specific enough to name separately.
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