Do you know the difference between cinnamon and Nikki?

It turns out that “karagicha” (Nikki and its name in Okinawa), a herbal tea from Kunigamison village in Yarubaru, Okinawa, is almost identical to “cinnamon tea”. Karagicha” tastes much stronger!

Cinnamon and Nikki are spices and spices extracted from the same camphoraceous tree called Nikkei (肉桂).

Cinnamon is made from the dried bark of the trunk of the Ceylon Nikkei tree from Sri Lanka, which takes two years to cultivate.

Nikki, on the other hand, is taken from the root of the Okinawa Nikkei. It has a sweet aroma like cinnamon, but has a strong pungency.

It takes 15 years to grow and the roots are dug up by hand, making production time-consuming and labor-intensive. So in recent years, they have been making tea from the leaves instead of using the roots.

So the difference between cinnamon and nikki is due to “bark or root” and “origin”.

However, the production of Okinawa-grown Nikkei is small and scarce, and seedlings are not readily available.