taking tea to...

my first day in Tokyo, i woke up at 5 am (thank you, jetlag) and went out for a wander. discovered a lovely little residential neighborhood, listened to Buddhist monks chanting in a shrine complex, and drank several green tea lattes (which are marvellous in Japan--fluffy bitter matcha & warm milk, fantastic! nothing like the weird melon-flavoured Starbucks version over here) . i was waiting for the department stores to open, so i could check out their famous food floors, where there are all kinds of sweets, teas, prepared bento boxes, sushi...you name it. and then, what do i see first when i walk down to the food hall when it opens at 10am? yup...the French tea company Mariage Freres. because they're everywhere in Japan.

now, looking at the photo, you could imagine that's the sign in rue du Bourg-Tibourg in the Marais...only i know that it was taken at the front door of the Seita foodhall in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. thinking about the Marais, though, i wonder how all the Parisians are adjusting to their tea (& coffee) without smoke this morning. no more smoking in a French cafe--i can't imagine what my favourite places will look like, without that thick haze of Gitanes...bizarrely, the Japanese still can smoke in cafes. so those green tea lattes? i drank them with a thick haze of smoke billowing over from the smoking section...