A retail shop and tea room from the tea company Uogashi Meicha, Cha Ginza is Japanese tea room with a strong contemporary flavor. On the first floor is the retail bar where you can sample and purchase the company’s tea. For 100 yen, you can even try a cup of its unique ocha-presso — sencha steeped using an espresso machine. We talked with the store manager about this unique sencha, and he told us that the company put quite a bit of time and effort into developing the right kind of sencha to use with espresso machines–from the tea plant variety to the processing and finishing of the leaves.
Entrance and 1st floor retail shop.
A cup of ocha-presso for 100 yen.
On the second floor of the shop is a sencha tasting room set up in a U-shape with benches, no tables. The concept was to imitate traditional roadside benches where people would rest and have tea as they walked traveled from city to city (several hundred years ago of course). For 500 yen, you start with a glass of sweet, sparkling Japanese sake (which may have been a season thing), then move on to the first steeping of the sencha of the day with a traditional Japanese sweet for balance. Then the sommelier brings out the second steeping. I did not visit the third floor, but the white-washed interior is designed for drinking matcha tea–in a contemporary-style tea ceremony perhaps?
The sommelier's preparation table.
A glass of Japanese sake to start.
First steeping with Japanese sweet candy.
The second steeping.
Directions to Cha Ginza
The nearest train station is the Ginza subway station, and the shop is just outside of exit B3 on your right. It is also a short walk from Yurakucho Station on the JR line. Walking toward the main Ginza intersection (where the Mitsukoshi and Wako Dept. stores are located) on the right side of the street, turn right onto the side street between the Armani and Dior shops.
STORE NAME: 茶・銀座 | Cha Ginza
ADDRESS: 東京都中央区銀座5-5-6 | 5-5-6 Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo
TEL: 03-3571-1211 | FAX: 03-3571-1219
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