With a couple of Starbucks and at least one other big-name coffee shop within easy walking distance, not long ago Tomohiro Tsuchiya would have been better off opening his little cafe somewhere else.

But he's got a trendy product to offer -- tea.

Thanks to a major media advertising blitz by big tea companies, Tsuchiya is attracting a broad range of customers to his little teahouse and reaping a share of the huge swell in Japanese tea consumption.