“Ocharaka” is a Japanese tea specialty shop that sells various kinds of tea leaves including green tea and Hōjicha. You can get to the shop walking just 20 seconds from Mitsukoshi-mae station, Ginza line.
This time, Kumiko Funayama, Culumi Nakada, and Hikari Shiina (from Tokyo Girl's Update) visited Ocharaka.
As soon as you open the shop’s door, you can smell fruity scent. The owner devotes to cultivate tea leaves and offers various kinds of tea from seasonal tea to special flavored tea. The shop always has a stock of more than 50 kinds of tea leaves. Some flavors are ones that we have never heard before, such as “soda pop”, “roast sweet potato”, and “marron glace”!
The shop owner Mr. Stephan is from France, and opened this shop to spread the delicious taste of Japanese tea to foreigners. The taste of the standard Japanese tea is hard to accept for most foreigners, and some people end up just by having a sip. But he thought that was unfortunate and came up with the idea of creating fruity and sweet flavors that foreigners would also love, and this was the beginning of “Ocharaka”!
It is difficult to decide which flavor to try from this large variety of tea leaves. But don’t worry, you can taste them!
Since there are so many flavors, the choice of the customers vary too, but the most popular flavor throughout a year is “green tea with summer mandarin orange scent”, Mr. Stephan says.
With the recommendation of Mr.Stephan, three girls chose peach, banana chocolate, pear, and lichee flavors. Peach, pear, and lichee flavors are all green tea based, and banana chocolate is Hōjicha based.
The aromatic smell drifted through the air as we poured tea. You might wonder the tea taste same as the flavor but, the scent only remains in the air and it tastes green tea basically. Since all tea leaves here are flavored by hand-rolling, so the aromatic scent strongly remains but never get mixed together.
If you are thinking of trying Japanese tea, or even if you already drink it regularly, why don’t you enjoy a new flavor at “Ocharaka”?
Source: tokyogirlsupdate.com
"Ocharaka" located in COREDO Muromachi. OpenRice recommend COREDO Muromachi restaurants 😋🍴
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