Japanese tea time at Saryo Itoen

The other day, I heard that many tourists from abroad have difficulty finding a café where they can drink Japanese tea. I had never thought of that before as Shizuoka Prefecture is a big production area of tea and we daily drink our tea, especially middle-grade green tea, at home and working places. It may be difficult to find Japanese tea on the menu of an ordinary western-style café, however, there are also Japanese style cafés where you can eat traditional sweets with Japanese tea. They are called “amamidokoro” or “kanmidokoro” (there are two ways to read Chinese characters 甘味処). I can’t remember if there are any such cafés in the downtown, but there is a convenient place to drink tea near JR Hamamatsu Station. It is Saryo Itoen in the basement of the main building of Entetsu Department Store.

Itoen is a shop selling tea leaves, and Saryo Itoen is its eating area. They have a variety of tea, soft-serve ice cream and some Japanese sweets in their menu. The food samples looked delicious!

Among the sweets, there are two vegan options: Shiratama Zenzai and Matcha Shiratama Zentzai. Shiratama Zenzai is adzuki bean soup with rice flour dumplings. When I went there today, I chose the one with matcha or powdered green tea. It didn’t take long before it was served.

In fact, I was disappointed to see this because it looked very different from the food sample. After stirring it with the spoon, however, I found many adzuki beans hidden under the surface.

The adzuki bean soup is hot and the dumplings melted in my mouth. As it was very sweet, I couldn’t feel the taste of tea very well. However, I thought it very good to have when you are tired or on a cold day. When I ate it up, I felt slight bitterness of powdered green tea. It was surely different from ordinary adzuki soup.

As zenzai was so sweet, I felt like drinking tea additionally. I went to the counter again and ordered hot hojicha or roasted green tea. As for tea, you can choose hot or cold tea. When it was served, I felt the excellent aroma of the tea immediately. This is one of the reasons why I like roasted green tea.

It had a mild flavor. I noticed that it wasn’t too hot and easy to drink. Maybe they control its temperature carefully to extract its flavor well. I was very impressed by that. By using this tea, they provide a seasonal menu item Hojicha Shiruko or adzuki bean soup with roasted green tea. Both hojicha and adzuki beans have an effect to warm up you body. I think I’ll come back on a cold day in December.

Now is the season of autumn leaves, and Itoen has other seasonal products such as green tea flavored with yuzu, a citrus fruit that also warm up your body. There were also chocolate flavored three kinds of tea and wasanbon or Japanese refined sugar.

Regardless the season, deep-steamed green tea in Shizuoka Prefecture is a popular product, I guess.

In addition to Itoen, there are some other places in the department store and the train station where local tea leaves are sold. Some shops let you taste tea.

This is the 200th article of this blog. At first, I didn’t intend to continue so long, but I found it interesting to introduce our local products and traditional food and enjoyed writing. Now, I’ll take a rest for a while. I’m not sure if I'll restart writing or not. I’d like to thank you all and hope you will enjoy your stay in Hamamatsu if you live in/have a chance to come to Hamamatsu.