Hachijū-hachi-ya, the 88th day after risshun, the first day of spring, falls on May 2 in most years. It's the day that marks the beginning of the new tea harvest season, according to tradition. The nation's actual tea-harvesting season begins a little earlier, starting with ...
Japanese green tea, known for its health benefits and centuries-old brewing and serving rituals, has won the hearts and taste buds of people around the world. But with the dramatic aging of its society, Japan is seeing a fall in its tea farmer population that ...
Confronted with slumping domestic consumption, producers of high-quality Uji green tea and the Kyoto Prefectural Government are working together to make a sales pitch abroad. As part of their overseas campaign, they invited a group of about 40 French entrepreneurs and journalists to a full-course ...
A line of 16,291 green tea dumplings running between two World Heritage sites in Kyoto Prefecture's history-steeped city of Uji set a Guinness World Record on Sunday for the longest such line. Volunteers from local charities and businesses took three hours to set up the ...
Japanese tea can be beguiling and bitter. And the ceremonial tradition that surrounds it can be disconcerting and dull. The staff at Ippodo, a centuries-old tea merchant in Kyoto, may not go in for the rigidity of tradition, but they take their tea very seriously. To ...
Remind me again what Japan's national (nonalcoholic) drink is. No, it's not coffee, whether out of vending machines or fastidiously dripped by well-coiffed baristas. It is, of course, green tea — not that you'd realize it in Tokyo. This may be the land where ...
A pig farm in Shizuoka Prefecture, known as a production hub for high-quality green tea, has come up with a new way of raising branded pork: having its pigs drink tea instead of water. The pigs, named "Tea-ton" (meaning tea pork), have proved popular among ...
Making the perfect cup of matcha — the frothy green tea served during Japanese tea ceremonies — requires skill. The trick is to use a bamboo whisk to whip the brew swiftly with a smooth back-and-forth motion of the wrist. "Work quickly and keep whisking ...
More than a thousand years ago, Buddhist monks in Japan began a daily ritual of grinding green tea leaves into powder, mixing it into hot water with a bamboo whisk, then sharing the tea from a single cup. Today matcha in the U.S. is considerably ...
One of the first things you see as you exit Kanazawa Station is a giant brass sculpture of a teapot sunken drunkenly into a mound of grass or, depending on your interpretation, tilting to fill a cup of the refreshing green brew the city ...
A beauty school owner in Shimada, Shizuoka Prefecture, has created a new line of cosmetics made with a green tea extract. Megumi Ota, who teaches aromatherapy, said the idea to use green tea came from a student who wondered why the aroma wasn't available. Ota, who ...
A young British entrepreneur has devised a novel way to use the green tea powder known as "matcha," which has already become a popular flavoring in cakes, chocolate and coffees. James Shillcock's startup business is selling an energy drink that incorporates matcha, which he believes ...
