Must-sip in San Jose?

Yo, DogMa: If you can get over to Fremont (maybe 20 miles away-ish), 101 Plantations on Warm Springs Blvd Oriental Shopping Center (my name for it), will serve you up a gong-fu style tea service that is great. They have a handfull of pu-erh that is very very good, and their Jasmine Pearls positively rock. They also had some very good high-mountain oolongs from Taiwan and China. The website is 101tea.com, and they have good driving maps, if you will be driving. I know this is not actually in San Jose, but it is as close as I can get to helping you. Hope you can make it out to them, they are all friendly and have very good teas. Sincerely, Teajunkie

Chinese Clay Art - you can buy very inexpensive good quality raw yixing clay and good set of chahu making tools there as I did. Po Zhou is a very warm guy, just let him know you're coming ahead of the time - they are not open every day... Do not forget to visit Fong's place (Imperial Tea Palace) in SF. And of course if you decide to ski and(or) gamble - we will have the best tea between Sierras and Rockies at my place in Reno!

Sasha.