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Imayo Irokumi No Ito

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You know those green tea mochi ice cream desserts you can get at almost any Japanese restaurant in the US? The first sniff of this immediately makes me think of those. A very specific kind of green tea, bitter and not quite sweet, with a dry rice flour impression that is probably the hemp and sandalwood notes. The tea mellows a bit as it dries to become something like a very grassy sencha, it's the most realistic green tea, along with grass and other greenery. Overall this scent is just soooo green.

Edited by mganz42

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In the bottle - GREEN!!!!!

Wet -Slightly floral green tea, light, fresh, delicate, not sweet. Like the scent you get when you break some thicker green flower stems, the green of a florists shop.

When dry it's slightly less green and I get a touch of sandalwood which warms it a little, and maybe a tinge of rice but still very light, stays close to the skin and doesn't overpower.

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On the decant wand, this is the pure, bright color green. The brightness of the green in Emerald Lace.

Put it on, though, and it leans toward green tea blend: light, floral, and a bit grassy, but coquettish rather than naturalistic. More the green of the flower than the green of the grass. Its sweetness is floral rather than sugary.

In drydown, the blend brings out more moss on my skin and a whiff of faint ivy bitterness now and then. It has moved more toward the other plants: the moss, the grass, the ivy.

The overall effect is a commitment to green, though the details shift a bit. It's a lovely expression of the artwork.

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overall impression  this is pure, unsweetened, matcha to me - it reminds me of experimenting with it while working in a smaller coffee shop..

 

wet- i catch some of the ivy & bitterness, it’s yellow green like fresh cut grass but on a cloudier day. the bitterness almost borders on fennel for me, but doesn’t get there. i can see the comparisons to fresh cut flower stems. there is a slight sweetness as it dries,  but only enough to temper the bitterness and make the green more neutral. i’d imagine that’s the sandalwood. it almost wants to go to a floral at points,  but it doesn’t get there either.

 

dry- it’s still green, grassy, and matcha. my mind keeps trying to trick me into smelling lemongrass or a white floral.  this isn’t something i’d usually expect to wear, but it’s not awful. i am going to revisit it in a bit and see what i think :)

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I've let this settle for a few days before trying it again, and I'm glad I did. Previously there was a strong impression of Irish Spring soap - that has now mellowed out of existence. Now I get a creamy matcha and sandalwood combo, an almost saffron-like hay, and that floral-shop green smell others have mentioned. The ferns are distinct, too, and the deeper scent of moss. Lovely memories of the Pacific Northwest from this. Clean, but with depth. I think this will be a regular in the warm-weather rotation.

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Ivy, moss, green. It dries to a matcha, hay and a whiff of fern-moss. This one is very green tea, fresh, gender-neutral. Its got moss, green, and a subtle sexiness to it. Medium throw and wear length.

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Did you miss Tennis Match from the 2018 Lupers? This is your second chance. I'm testing them side by side and they could be twins.

 

There are a few subtle differences: Tennis Match has more of a bite from the dandelion sap. The green tea in Imayo is the same to my nose as the one used in Shanghai and is notably absent from Tennis. As they settle in, they are similar to the point that I couldn't tell you which one I applied where if I didn't already know. Fully dry, Imayo settles firmly into the green tea note and Tennis lands on a soft oakmoss, but really these are twinning hard otherwise.

 

Needless to say, I absolutely love it and I'm glad there's a chance to essentially have a backup of Tennis Match if I want it. If you love green grassy scents, this is your jam.

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Agreed that this one starts out very much like Tennis Match -- lots of fresh greens and sweet grasses, but with a big whiff of dry matcha that differentiates it from Tennis Match. But the similarity ends once I apply it. Something about the green tea and sandalwood in this blend just isn't working for me -- on my skin, the fresh greenness goes away and takes on a quality that I can only really describe as Play-Doh-adjacent. Chalking this one up to a skin chemistry fail. Oh well, I still have Tennis Match for my green Luper needs.

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I really like this one. It's a velvety, grassy, slightly bitter (but not in a bad way..) green tea scent that's way more alluring than I expected--one of those "lucky I got half decants of all the Shungas, because I would never have picked this one on my own." It's more atmospheric as opposed to perfume-y. Lasting power is low on me though. 

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My decanter left a sniffle of this *enabler* *cough*.  It is lovely and I never would have tried it from the notes.  It’s green and fresh, reminds me of something, maybe Habu, though not quite.  Maybe a fancy high end perfume, but better.  It would be a lovely lotion scent.  I may get a surprise bottle😳

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Faint grassy green tea with some moss and green plants. It goes away super quickly though. The hemp starts to overtake most of the notes on me as it's fading along with the sandalwood.

 

It's just okay, might like it better if the throw and staying power were better. 

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Vibrantly green and fresh.  This is how the vibrantly glowing green of rainforest moss SHOULD smell. It's velvety and plush, with the faintest hint of sandalwood grounding it in the background.  It's beautiful.  I just wished it lasted a little longer.  I might still hunt down a bottle since, hopefully, the sandalwood might get it to stick around more with some aging.  

 

ETA.  Wanted to add, something in it also reminded me of Emerald Lace, though, when comparing the two, the tobacco and lace of EL make the two pretty distinct, but maybe it's just how Imayo really does smell so emerald green.

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