May has been a whirlwind month for me this year - two days after returning home from Las Vegas and San Diego, I flew out to Japan for a week of events in Tokyo and had a wonderful few days in some of the city’s best-known tea locations

After 20 years of interest, Japanese women are still fascinated by British tea traditions and love to go out to tearooms for a full Afternoon Tea with neat little sandwiches, warm scones (usually now served with clotted cream made in Japan rather than imported from Britain) and an array of delicate pastries. It’s so interesting for me to travel from the west coast of America to the Japanese capital and speak at events that revolve around exactly the same three-tier cake stands, pretty teapots and sweet and savoury tea-time treats.

My first two events here were held, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, at the very pretty, English-style St Christopher’s Garden tearoom in Jiyugaoka which is owned by Kimio Mitsuno (the photo shows Kimio with Asako Steward, members of the tearoom staff and myself). Arriving at the tearoom reminded me of visits to English cottages in summer when gardens are filled with colour and roses and clematis scramble energetically over fences and old brick walls. The path to the front door of St Christopher’s Garden is lined with big tubs of fuschias, white hydrangeas, old-fashioned roses of every hue, deep purple campanulas, climbing jasmine, peonies and daisies with their sunshine yellow centres (see below). Inside the shop, Lloyd Loom chairs (like the ones we used to have at Tea-Time in Clapham) are reminiscent of a country house conservatory and antique English cabinets display delicate bone china cups and saucers from England’s most famous potteries.

When I arrived with my friend Asako Steward who always interprets for me wheneverI am giving a presentation to Japanese people and who had organised my visits with her Japanese publisher, Mr Shintaku, the upstairs room was being prepared for the most sumptuous tea which guests were to enjoy while we talked to them about tea trends in the UK. First we talked about the types of tea we drink traditionally in the UK and then we gave the group 6 very British-style black teas to try - a Darjeeling, an Assam, a Ceylon, a Kenyan CTC tea, an Earl Grey from Britain’s Tregothnan Tea Estate in Cornwall and an English Breakfast blend.

Then, while I discussed modern British tea shops and tea bars and explained changes in attitude to tea in the UK as a result of the UK Tea Council’s campaign with young celebrities and the Tea4Health campaign, guests nibbled their way through luxurious sandwiches, baby quiches, warm scones served with local clotted cream and a stunning, irresistible selection of pastries. The use of ingredients and the presentation were inspired.

The next day, Lipton Brooke Bond House (where a team of ladies work hard to make sure events happpen smoothly - see the photo below) was the venue for two events - each to a group of 32 tea lovers - and this time, I talked about developments in British tea drinking since the late 1990, how big tea companies buy and blend their tea, and trends in the advertising of tea since the 1660s. It is fascinating that Thomas Garraway promoted tea in the 1660s on its health benefits, claiming all sorts of remedial effects for the beverage, and that today, the good news about tea’s health benefits is helping to drive the market and increase sales and consumption all around the world. Between the 17^th century and today, tea in advertisement has variously been connected to royalty, aristocracy, government ministers, empire, fair weights and measures, temperance, a healthy active life, elegance, monkeys and working class shift workers in British factories.

The third day of events took me back to the same building in Ginza suburb that houses Brooke Bond House but this time we were on the ground floor in the recently refurbished Lipton Tea Room that is owned by Mr and Mrs Fukunaga, friends of mine for many years. The chic yellow and taupe interior is a very new look for the traditional Lipton tea houses, founded in the 1930s and still going strong in Tokyo and Kyoto. The table wares, tea pots and products all have a very stylish European feel - a fusion of French design, bright yellow, English-style tea cosies and interesting historical Lipton prints and adverts on the wall.

The atmosphere is calm and restful and the service is exquisite. The cake counter is decked with scones, bakewell tarts, brightly-coloured macaroons and fruit tartlets. It apparently took a while for regular customers to become used to the very stylish, contemporary decor but now the shop is busy every day with customers who love the lunchtime soups and savoury quiches, the tea-time scones and tempting cakes, and above all, the very pretty pots that are filled with excellent quality, well-brewed tea. The tea selection includes several single estates in Darjeeling, Assam, and Sri Lanka, Chinese blacks and favourite blends and flavoured teas - Asako and I enjoyed more than one pot during our day here (as you can see below).

While in Kyoto, I spent a fascinating afternoon with Takahiro Yagi whose family make silver, brass and copper caddies and whom I wrote about last year after meeting Taka at Tim d’Offay’s Postcard Teas in London. I went to Taka’s family home in Kyoto to learn how he and his father (and grandfather before them) make the stunning caddies and I shall be writing about the family and the caddies in Pearl Dexter’s Tea-A Magazine. From Kyoto, I travelled to China’s Yunnan province to learn more about puerh tea, so I’ll be writing about that in my next blog.

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