This store has been selling Japanese tea for some 300 years. “Yame tea,” as it was named by 9th generation shopkeeper Hisakichi Konomi in 1925, is a famous name in green tea throughout Japan. This shop doesn’t just sell the tea, they manufacture it and even sell wholesale to other stores outside the city area. For those more interested in its history, they’ve also set up a museum dedicated to green tea.

Yame has ideal land for cultivating tea plants and as more and more locals came to be involved with the growing and distribution of the plant, Yame tea started to make a name for itself and now it’s sold everywhere.
Japanese washi paper is used in the drying and roasting phase of processing. Because washi paper was an indispensible material in processing green tea in the past, Yame was home to many washi manufacturers.

The shopkeeper served me “shizuku-cha.” It had a deep, refined flavor, and the first serving was rather sweet. Quite the high-grade leaf.
As the shopkeeper explained to me, a good tea has a balance of astringency, bitterness and umami. He also mentioned how different types of tea from other regions will develop a slight sweetness when grown in Yame. As the taste of the tea differs depending on the type of tea and where it was grown, the type of sweets served with the tea differs in each region, too.