Keith

sure thing, once a year in early spring a few of the western-facing tea vendors sell preorders on a fairly small amount of extremely desirable green tea, and this year i picked up some Mao Jian tea from white2tea.com. I did also get their "Wild Huang" yellow tea, but im fairly certain it was the mao jian i was drinking on a stardew valley episode.
unfortunately, those teas are gone. white2tea is not really in the greentea business and only does this once a year. fortunately there's 1. always next year and 2. plenty of other places to get great green tea. first place i would check is yunnansourcing.com. their tea is always extremely fairly priced, some would say suspiciously so. i would go to the "spring 2024" section and just sort by highest price to lowest. nothing is going to be crazy high, and it'll probably be worth it to skip their lower grade offerings (also the grades mean nothing).
if you're less priced conscious i would maybe also check out onerivertea.com and sevencups.com. they're definitely going to have a little bit more interesting selection, but also a smaller selection with worse price:performance.
most of these places will give you tasting notes but here's my advice so you're not pouring over hundreds of teas: you want something bud heavy (tiny little leaves like pine needles or little curls, sometimes fuzzy). don't live by this rule but the more time green tea leaf has to develop it goes from sweet and fruity to sweet and nutty to sweet and vegetal to umami and vegetal.

since I've never been to Japan my only recommendation is Ippodo Tea (which has a US online retailer and i think even a location in NYC?). They have a really good reputation, at least with online buyers and tourists. They also have a reputation for being very expensive. and i can confirm that, because i buy some of their eyewateringly priced matcha once, maybe twice a year. pretty much everything they sell is excellent.

for kinds of tea to buy, fortunately that is much easier. granted, im really not an expert in Japanese teas at all. i know much less about it than Chinese and even Taiwanese teas. I won't really describe these teas because I'll get way ahead of myself so you'll have to do your own research.
My favorites:
matcha, sencha, gyokuro, hojicha
Also worth trying:
genmaicha, kukicha
Haven't tried, but very interested:
tamaryokucha, shincha*

It's actually just about shincha season right now. i may not have this totally correct, but what i understand is that shincha is just first harvest sencha. i've already got my first flush green tea for the year from china, but japanese teas are often heavily shade grown, which slows their growth and produces a slightly later harvest(?). Again im not an expert here. But if you go to Japan in a few weeks you MAY be able to get this year's Shincha, otherwise you will be drinking last year's tea. although with modern refrigeration storage especially in japan, maybe not such a huge deal

I want to narrow down this list for someone that just wants short info on what to try, and doesnt want to google 15 things. get some match and some sencha and some hojicha. boom, easy

since I've never been to Japan my only recommendation is Ippodo Tea (which has a US online retailer and i think even a location in NYC?). They have a really good reputation, at least with online buyers and tourists. They also have a reputation for being very expensive. and i can confirm that, because i buy some of their eyewateringly priced matcha once, maybe twice a year. pretty much everything they sell is excellent.

for kinds of tea to buy, fortunately that is much easier. granted, im really not an expert in Japanese teas at all. i know much less about it than Chinese and even Taiwanese teas. I won't really describe these teas because I'll get way ahead of myself so you'll have to do your own research.
My favorites:
matcha, sencha, gyokuro, hojicha
Also worth trying:
genmaicha, kukicha
Haven't tried, but very interested:
tamaryokucha, shincha*

It's actually just about shincha season right now. i may not have this totally correct, but what i understand is that shincha is just first harvest sencha. i've already got my first flush green tea for the year from china, but japanese teas are often heavily shade grown, which slows their growth and produces a slightly later harvest(?). Again im not an expert here. But if you go to Japan in a few weeks you MAY be able to get this year's Shincha, otherwise you will be drinking last year's tea. although with modern refrigeration storage especially in japan, maybe not such a huge deal

massively complicated subject, i recommend reading Lawrence Zhang's writing on the subject (a historian who happens to also run the massively influential tea blog Marshaln.com)
here http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/features.php?searchterm=029_kim.inc&issue=029
and here https://www.marshaln.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/GFC1601_06_Zhang-3.pdf

TLDR it's less a miniaturization and more that it's a style that's always been miniature, but also it's a story about propaganda and how sometimes nation-states are the tail wagging the cultural dog