Our Story

As a normal Kiwi dad I would never have thought I would end up drinking black tea much, let alone carrying around a flask of freshly brewed green tea. I have learned to drink it strong, just like the farmers do, but I didn't used to like it at all. 

I spent some time in Japan in my early twenties as an avid martial arts student, but even then I never really thought much of green tea. My shiatsu/macrobiotics teacher used to make us drink it with every meal, but that time it is fair to say I far preferred Shochu! (aka Japanese vodka).

And yet, a transformation has since taken place, so I am left to wonder what happened in the interim. I now couldn't imagine living without it.

Why have I come to enjoy it so much? Why does it taste so different to me now? 

This is what I think: in just the same way as your first olive may have made your face screw up, only to later become one of your favorite foods - I have come to believe that my body literally rewired my taste buds, in large part due to the effect real green tea has had on my general sense of clarity and wellbeing.

I suspect it all starts off with the fact that green tea is very good for you. Really, it appears to be good for so many things at once that they start to become difficult to count when you list them all, and in many cases scientists can't even figure out why, or how it works - they only see the results.

See here for - Extensive Research Linking Green Tea to Healthy Aging

So how does this fit into my story? What got me hooked? I pretty much think for a living, spending most of my time writing, and sometimes when I was on a late-night mission I would just drink green tea. Prior to that I used to drink coffee and chocolate - the same way some will go for energy drinks - but with that the crash was always just as big as the high. Not so with green tea. 

So I think that is what happened - the way it tastes isn't just about which tea you drink, it's about how your brain processes that information based on past experience. A whole world begins to open up, to the point where I have - regrettably - probably become a bit of a green tea snob. 

At the very least, I can certainly tell the difference now. But I suspect the right sort of exposure over time was the key to that transformation, as with wine etc, and I think this is where I got lucky. I discovered this difference in quality merely by chance.

To be clear, however, when I say quality - I do not mean price. The tea that changed me was not expensive, it was just good. Nothing fancy, it was simply the real stuff. It is actually quite a bit cheaper that what we can buy off the shelf locally, which is not nearly as good. 

Most people, when they think about green tea, think about matcha. But matcha is a powdered, heavily processed form of green tea that most Japanese people would only use for cooking, or rarely in a more ceremonial context.

The tea we're talking about here is leaf tea - sencha, kukicha, and other everyday styles that come in many grades and cuts. Matcha isn't what people actually drink in Japan day to day, and almost all leaf tea available internationally at an affordable price is far below what grandma would be drinking at home. And who would know better than the people who have spent their entire lives growing it? If you want a good fish, ask a fisherman, so to speak. 

So I was lucky, as I say. Mie's mum used to send this tea over from Japan in bags — the same tea her own family has always bought locally from the farmers. And perhaps this is where our business idea came from - even our Japanese friends can't get the real stuff here in NZ. So we sort of became an impromptu tea supplier by accident in this sense, but it also meant we often ran out ourselves. The demand was too great for Mie's mum to keep up, so we had to start hatching a plan. Now Mie's mum ships tea for us when we are not there, and makes a small income on the side.  

This also why I am only telling my side of the story here. Japanese people already know all of this. Green tea is an open secret there. It is obvious, like the sky being blue. They grow up with it, and for the most part never get to experience the sort of shift I did. 

This explains our mission. It is very simple, totally honest, and we believe it is a truly good thing - good for us, good for you, good for the farmer, and good for the world. That no doubt sounds a bit corny I suppose, but it is not in any way cynical. This is our own small win-win-win-win, just a little Zen Garden of a business that our kids may one day inherit.

So this is what we're all about. Very simple. We're bringing the real thing directly to your door: real farmer-grade leaf tea, bought direct from growers in Japan, shipped fresh.

It's also possible we may add a few special non-tea items in due course, just things we like that we can't generally find outside of Japan - so keep an eye on The Pantry to see what shows up over time.

Finally, and if you have ever visited Japan for yourself, you will understand the service ethic there - the attention to detail, and the friendly personal exchange. This is another thing we will be seeking to echo in the way we operate - so if ever you aren't entirely happy, do feel free to contact us directly.