JJapanese Food

Been drinking Japanese tea for a year now and only just realised I’ve been missing the entire point of it

  • November 30, 2025


Right, so bit of confession here. Started getting into Japanese green tea about a year ago because I wanted to cut down on coffee. Bought some sencha from the Asian supermarket, chucked boiling water on it, drank it while scrolling my phone. Job done.

Fast forward to last month when I was watching this documentary about traditional tea houses in Kyoto, and it properly hit me I've been treating tea like instant coffee. The whole point is that it's meant to be a ritual, not just chugging caffeine while multitasking.
Started doing some reading about 茶道 (sadō) and the philosophy behind it. Even for everyday tea drinking (not formal tea ceremony), there's this whole mindfulness aspect I'd completely ignored. The preparation, the temperature, the breathing, actually sitting and appreciating it instead of drinking it while checking emails.

Decided to properly commit to it. Got some decent organic genmaicha from https://shop.ikkyu-tea.com/collections/genmaicha (Yame region stuff), and now I actually take fifteen minutes in the morning to prepare it properly. Measure the leaves, heat the water to the right temp, let it steep correctly, sit and actually drink it without my phone.
Sounds pretentious written out like this, but honestly? It's changed my entire morning. Feel way calmer starting the day. The tea tastes completely different too when you're not rushing it.

Anyone else had this realisation? That Japanese tea culture isn't just about the drink itself but the whole process around it?

by kamelsalah1

47 comments

  1. A huge difference is not using boiling water when making it as well. You’re not supposed to use boiling water for tea or coffee.

  2. Glad you found your preferred way to enjoy tea. That’s definitely a good thing.

    But it’s not like you were missing the only point and now found it. Various people have various preferences for enjoying things. It’s not like most Japanese people take 15 minutes to make the tea “properly”. Like it or not, buying a bottle of cold sencha from a platform vending machine and casually drinking it on a train while checking mails is also part of the Japanese tea culture, significantly more widespread than doing sado.

  3. I had time to brew a pot of tea at my previous job. I had a lil cast iron tea pot and would spent 15~ minutes getting everything ready.

    I miss that so much. The tea was good, but I really miss the process and alone time I had.

  4. Man don’t get too wrapped up in all that. It’s fine if enjoy it but 1) Japanese people also buy tea out of a vending machine in a plastic bottle and drink it as they go about their business 2) genmaicha is a cheap peasant tea not used for tea ceremony; you really need fancy matcha if you want to do that.

  5. happy for you. I enjoy tea the way most people do. after forgeting I made one a couple hours ago, now its cold but cant be bothered to reheat it.

  6. Theres a more thoughtful way to use paper towels. Listening carefully to the ripping of the perforations, the way you smoothly wipe up a bit of spilled jam on the counter, the breathing….

  7. Finding a great stick doesn’t mean you have to learn kendo.

    But kendo is a great art to learn.

    Enjoy.

  8. If you ask 99% of Japanese folks, they do not partake in tea ceremonies everyday let alone once a week let alone once a month. Maybe, maybe they do it once a year. And matcha?? Most Japanese locals do not drink matcha on the daily nor weekly. Sencha is the dominant green tea consumed. So don’t beat yourself up and definitely don’t turn into some performative tea ceremony master amongst your circle either. Make tea that is comfortable to you in which your budget and free time allows.

  9. I think tea is wonderful because there are so many ways to interface with it. The way you did it before wasn’t “wrong,” but the way you’re doing it now sounds great. I have a similar approach – it’s an opportunity to slow down and do one thing a few times a day. No multi-tasking, not while I’m working, just making, then sitting and drinking a cup of tea. I started drinking tea for the same reason, to ditch coffee, and treated it similarly for years. Ten years since pivoting to a slower and more intentional relationship with it, it’s one of my most cherished parts of my day.

  12. I love this.

    This is also why I spend 8 to 10 minutes every morning hand-grinding 25 g of coffee beans and making a pour-over. It’s not just the nice cup of coffee at the end, it’s the peaceful ritual of doing it. 

  13. > Sounds pretentious written out like this

    Imagine if you said it out loud to some Japanese person.

  14. If you like the relaxation around it, I highly recommend looking into gong fu tea sessions. It’s Chinese, but I use it for a lot of Taiwanese oolong. There’s a lot of yourtube videos on it. I use it for long study sessions, just rebrewing the tea 7-9 times in small amounts.

    Japanese tea is high in L-theanine, helps with calmness, too. I love genmaicha, I bought some really nice loose leaf of it in Tokyo. It’s a really fun world to explore!

  15. It’s neat to learn about the things we like! The different processes used to make different types of tea is also really cool to dig into. The fact that people have been drinking tea for thousands of years is also very cool. 

    I use an app for meditations and one of my favourites goes along with a morning beverage. It suggests imagining about where each of the individual ingredients come from. As someone who’s generally already stressed and tense in the morning, I find that part of the experience especially helps me engage differently with my drink. I sometimes feel like I had never actually “tasted” the tea before, too, after I’ve done the meditation along with drinking it. 

    Edit: you should check out r/tea if you don’t mind a bit of a rabbit hole! That’s where I thought this was posted first, although you probably would have had more favourable responses there. “Japanese tea culture” is way more broad than one might think which is why there are a lot of corrections in the comments

  17. To be fair you can do that ritual with any beverage, or you could drink that tea and do no ritual. Really whatever you want/you enjoy.

  19. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than drinking it like instant coffee. Lots of restaurants serve tea. Even the conveyor belt sushi places have a little pot of dry matcha (or some other form of powdered tea) and a hot water tap so you can make your own tea.

  21. Uhhhhh as someone who is mixed Japanese, I think you have confused the hobby of tea vs just a drink. A lot of us just grab a bottle of premade tea or make it quickly from a kettle at home. I enjoy my “ritual” of making it every morning by just pouring some hot water from my kettle over a premade hojicha or sencha tea bag in my mug. It’s not a realization. You just discovered that some Japanese people are also REALLY into tea.

  23. Just to provide a counterpoint to most of the other comments (which aren’t wrong): I think it’s great you’re enjoying discovering this and the effect it’s having on your day. If you enjoy sado, the next step is to find other people to learn from and share it with. Sado is really about hospitality and sharing, more than a personal journey through technique. Not that it isn’t a personal journey, but the hospitality is much more important than anything else. 

  25. Mindfulness is not limited to, nor a requirement of, tea.

    You could (and many do) have similar rituals with coffee and see the same benefits.

    Genuinely: glad you found something that works for you. We all need to take care of ourselves. 

  26. I am Japanese and I took tea ceremony lessons for years while I lived in Japan. Majority of Japanese haven’t taken official tea ceremony lessons and they don’t follow the rituals if they drink matcha. I wouldn’t fret too much on rituals but if you want to follow the rituals, keep in mind there are many schools of tea ceremonies. Mine was Omote Senke which we like to think the original school. But the most popular one is Ura Senke.

    Matcha (I differentiate it from regular green tea because it’s different) has many health benefit too, one of which is tons of vitamin c.

  28. It seems like people are ragging on you a bit but I think the sentiment behind and the results of your increased thoughtfulness are lovely.

    My fave tea memories are brewing it with water from those old giant thermos things with my grandma and mom throughout the day, from breakfast black tea to after dinner genmaicha (which might be peasant tea but it’s delicious-tho low caffeine). Not exactly with ceremony but in the present anyway. It was really nice!

  29. The improvement in your mental state is likely from putting your phone down for a bit and just sitting with your thoughts. These things are making us all dopamine junkies.

  30. The point of tea is to be drunk.

    Making tea into a ritual is great and a great way to bring mindfulness to it and give yourself space in the mornings, but if you don’t create a ritual around tea you arent “missing the point”

  31. You didn’t mention the water. I’ve always felt that green tea outside Japan tasted off, and many times I think it was due to the water.
    People have different attitudes towards matcha and sencha, btw.

  32. I think you’re missing the point of having a ritual in the morning. You can do the same exact thing with coffee when making a pour over or a French press or a moka pot. Japanese people also drink tea on the go without all the ceremony.

    I think you just learned how to slow down and basically have a quick mediative moment for yourself before starting the rest of your day. Which is great! Think of other ways you can add this type of thinking to the rest of your life.

  33. They sell those teas in bottles and vending machines (cold and hot) at 7-Eleven in Japan. I assure you Japanese people aren’t having a little ritual every time they drink tea. People romanticise everything about Japan.

  35. Yes and no.

    Yep there is a whole art to it.

    But also, instant tea isn’t wrong either.

    Do what you enjoy in this bountiful world of options.

  36. No, you got it right, but then after watching YouTube’s you got it wrong. Regular tea drinking is not supposed to be a ritual. Matcha is, but nobody drinks matcha as a daily driver, not in Japan at least. It’s not normal to be consciously “mindful” for a cup of tea too unless you are in the ceremony room. That said, it is great to incorporate some symbolism in daily things like that, it is what differentiates humans from animals, symbolically at least.

    Maybe don’t make it like instant coffee though but at least get a sifter and make a pour over. Improves the taste.

  37. Eh, I’ve lived here for over ten years and I 100% just make and chug it.
    No one does any sort of ritual as far as I know, unless it is an official tea ceremony of sorts.
    Just enjoy the tea when and how you like.

  38. I always felt the deep ritual and spiritual connection to the tea and to the land when the office assistants in the staff room poured everybody a cup from a giant teapot and left it on their desk.

  39. I heard a Japanese person say: Japanese people are very slow. Because they want to experience life and enjoy it.

  42. I think this is a nice ritual you got there and it seems you understood the whole point of doing it. It is not about the actual tea.

  43. Its always good to be mindful regardless. We get caught up on our day to day and lose our focus a lot of times.

    I work in a Japanese company and I can guarantee you they dont care. There’s a time and place. My coworkers chug so much tea on a daily basis. And some just drink monster. In the end it’s on their choice of caffeine..

    I also know tea enthusiasts who do exactly what you mentioned when you read up on the philosophy, but its not an everyday event. They decide a day and time to the whole mindfully drinking tea thing.

  44. I mean…that’s one way to do a tea ritual. My tea ritual is I dim the living room lights, make it at 1030 on the dot with whatever mug strikes my fancy that night, I let it steep, and throw on some reading ambiance on my TV. Get my current read, or crochet project, and enjoy the flavor of whatever (non caffeinated) tea I chose that night.

    Not everyone’s ritual is gonna be the same!

    Edit: lmao I just realized this is the Japanese food sub and not the tea sub LOL

  45. You’re maybe overthinking it.

    Drink it according to your needs whether ritual or caffeine replenishment. Green tea is consumed like water in Japan. The country practically runs on green tea by day, alcohol by night.

    I drink tea and coffee with my Japanese family. Most days it’s basic coffee or black tea (koucha). We never do anything remotely ceremonial or contemplative. We also drink houjicha (roasted), mugicha(barley), hasucha(lotus), O’cha (green) and many besides.

    Many tea types for whatever reason, season or pleasin’.

  46. tea is just tea. you’re not supposed to do those elegant ceremonies alone… in fact that’s weird. in Japan we just drink tea like normal. Not everything has to be so mystical

  47. A lot of haters in the comments but honestly, I think it’s great what you have discovered. If it works for you and it has improved your life, more power to you! And thank you for the reminder that we all need to slow down

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