First and only time I drank Matcha was in Rikugien Garden near Komagome station last October in a small tea house in the middle of the garden.
I had decided to revisit the garden, for the third time, as I now have visited this garden every time I have been in Japan. The other two times had been late in the afternoon and this would be the first time visiting it before noon.
Inside the garden is a small open tea house, and one of the things I had been looking forward to was to enjoy a cup of tea there. Unfortunately when I got there it was filled with a small group of slightly noisy American (from the sound of it) tourists and most of the locals seemed to have fled the premises, and so did I. I walked a bit more around and when I saw, from the other side of the pond, thanks to a nice big zoom lens on my camera, that they were leaving, I decided to go back and fulfill my dream.
When I came back to the tea house it had already started to fill up with both young and older local women, but I managed to grab a part of a bench and ordered a set of, what seemed the standard choice, Green Tea with Sweets, which I now know was Matcha.
So in the shadow of the roof, it was around noon and getting quite warm, I enjoyed the foamy light green tea among the quiet chit-chat of the local women (I was the only man there) and a nice very sweet sweet, which had to be separated into at least 5 parts to be eaten. It was all like I had imagined.
To my regret I did not buy any tea at the tea house. But as I now have the urge for Matcha, I will have to shopping for some tea and at least the bamboo brush, the other preparation utensils can wait and it can be decided later, whether I want those as well.
My original posting about that day can be found here.
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