They say tea is the most popular beverage in the world, after water. Saying water is the most popular, though, is to me like saying sunshine is more popular than electric light; popularity doesn’t really come into it. Meaning that tea is really the most popular drink of choice, for the entire world. Even in coffee-loving America 80% of households have tea in their cupboards and iced tea is now even more popular there than soda (the third biggest news piece of 2016 after Brexi

In 2017, we visited the UK, the US, Denmark, Norway, Thailand, Japan, India and Hong Kong. Boy did we accomplish a lot. Such as... In 2017, we realised that our favourite restaurants in Tokyo were Chinese or Korean as shown to us by my sister and brother-in-law, and many of our favourite teas were oolongs (we also learned their correct name is wulong). For the sake of research, we taste-tested sakes at a tiny festival in northern Japan, including sparkling sake, and ate a sta

Picking up where we left off from the last installment on tea in Japan, here is the fourth and final lesson we learned during our five week adventure in the land of tea. You can read the first installment here. Also note that the list of tea house experiences below is a mere scratching of the surface – Japan has so much more to offer when it comes to correctly pouring hot water over dry leaves. Fresh, fresh sencha in the Tukimasa Simokita tea house in Tokyo Now, the final cha

Below you will find three of four ‘lessons’ about Japanese tea learned during our five week visit this April/May 2017. It is less academic than it sounds! The quantity of photos should give some idea of the prevalence of tea in Japan, as it is truly everywhere (Darjeeling marshmallows anyone?). Your standard, everyday selection of tea in a Tokyo grocery store My experience with Japanese tea goes back to my first visit when I was the eager age of six: we visited a temple and w