Those Clever Japanese…

Just a quick one here to close out June, and bring you a mini-post on my recent serendipitous Japanese find. I’ve been working on a much longer post detailing more of my adventures in Tokyo (e.g. fake food at Kappabashi, fortune-telling at Senso-ji temple, a time-lapse video of Shibuya Crossing, etc.), but just yesterday I enjoyed a most amazing reminder of just how creative the Japanese can be.

Towit: The first souvenir I bought in Japan was a box of tea of course – I mean Japan is nothing if not famous for tea, is it not? And given that I arrived at (what should have been…) the height of the “sakura” (cherry blossom) season (alas, it had peaked a week early this year so the trees in Tokyo were at the tail end of their bloom). 🙁

Nonetheless – given the time of year, I was delighted that the Tokyo shops were still selling “Sweet Sakura Tea”, so naturally I picked up a box of it (just 480Y for a box of 6 “sachets”).

But here’s the thing: I toted the box home to Ecuador in my rollie and only just yesterday (more than 2 months since I returned from Japan) I unearthed it to fix myself a hot cup of “sakura” tea. And when I opened the box? Yep, six pretty sachets, each wrapped in gold foil and… I naturally figured each held a normal teabag of loose dried cherry blossom tea.

Ah but not so fast. Thanks to the ever amazing ingenuity of the Japanase – when I tore open one of the gold foil packets, what spilled out?

Nope, not dry tea enclosed in a paper teabag, but rather…

SOGGY, wet, dripping FRESH cherry blossoms!

And indeed, just as the bitsy text on the box says: “Freshly-nipped cherry blossoms – the petals unfold in boiling water like blooming cherry blossoms.”

Sooooo pretty, no? And I must say – sipping my cup of cherry blossom tea here in Ecuador, verily transported me 9,000 miles back across the Pacific to the Land of the Rising Sun!
 

P.S. New here and curious who I am? Check my bio to learn more!  Better yet, subscribe to my email list (so you never miss a single post) and get a pdf of my 30+ Best Travel Tips (trust me, at least one is sure to be a revelation).