Recently, matcha (Japanese green tea, but it’s more powdery) has become popular all over the world. One of my Australian friends loves matcha and green ice cream.
In Kyoto, especially Uji region is famous for producing tea. There are 4 different types of tea, such as; Matcha, Sencha, Gyokuro and Hojicha. Japanese tea originally came from China during the early 9th century.
However, I have found better information from here about Japanese tea history:
When tea seeds were introduced to Japan, they were first planted at Toganoo. These seeds were later spread in Uji, which became the site to produce the highest quality of tea leaf in Japan.
Uji has witnessed the diversification of green tea. Beginning from the high-grade matcha, which was only accessible by the nobles, Sencha was invented in the 18th century to fulfil the need of common people. The combination of these two tea production techniques produced gyokuro. The increasing popularity of Uji tea is deeply connected with the successful of tea ceremonies, including Tōcha, Chanoyu and Senchadō.
If you are interested in more about Uji tea and Japanese tea history, please refer to this link, which most likely easy to understand the basic history of tea.
Anyhow, this is not about Japanese tea.
I want to introduce you to a cafe, just next to the Uji River. We had lunch just before here then decided to have some dessert or tea.
Wow, it was so tasty and yummy.
What do you have? Many Variety of Uji Tea dessert
This cafe was big, and the entrance was quite spacious. When we visited this care, it wasn’t busy at all.
I guess it might be a bit busier for the usual occasion.
The day we came to this care was just the day after the typhoon. The day before that, all the trains had stopped, so that I thought there were not many tourists.
I didn’t take any photos of inside the care but I’ve found it from their Instagram account ↓
After we were seated, and we looked through the menu, it was so many products were there, like green tea cakes, mochi, even some green tea chocolate.
I really wanted to have some Japanese green tea dessert, such as Matcha ice cream or something like that.
Thus, I ordered Match (green tea) jelly with Match (green tea) ice cream, red bean paste and little mochi (sticky rice cake ball). Then my best friend ordered Hojicha (smoked tea flavour) version.
Then great surprise, they were so big….
We expected a bit smaller than that….
Well, probably we could share only one dish but oh well, too late now.
We took quite a while to finish.
Well, we actually could not finish…. we tried!
Anyway, it was delicious, and that was exactly what I wanted to have since I had decided to go to Uji anyway.
As I wrote the beginning of this article, Uji is very famous for Japanese tea, yes, we must have it something about Uji tea!
And let me find something look yummy more from their Instagram here too.
And you can have a light lunch too. That looks really good too.
However, this care is just next to the river, and you can also walk around there. We didn’t walk there but I if it’s a really hot day, it must be a little bit cooler by the riverside.
READ MORE KYOTO TRAVEL STORIES
I hope you enjoyed my story of Nakamura Tokichi cafe dessert in KYOTO. Hopefully, you found it useful and make you got there too!
Here are a few more interesting articles about Yoshino that I recommend you read next:
A spooky story about saved by Seimei Shrine at a hotel in Kyoto 
Uji Rickshaw Ride tour: For Whom Don’t Want to Walk 
Oryouri Mitsuyasu review; One of the Best Restaurant in Kyoto 