Coffee Fest Seattle 2008

Coffee Fest Seattle was held at Washington Convention Center from September 12 to 14. We, SA Japanese Green Tea, had a booth and introduced traditional Japanese green tea.

Because the main focus of this show was COFFEE, there were many coffee companies and we were one of a few companies exhibiting only teas. We provide people with free samples of iced green tea, and all of our teas received many positive comments and feedback from potential customers. Especially, many people liked our Genmai cha. During the show, we came to be much confident that our teas would be liked by American consumers.

At the show, there was "latte art championship." And most impressively, the winner was Japanese barista, Hiroshi Sawada!!!! There were many American baristas competing in the championship, and I'm very proud of him as Japanese. Congratulation Hiroshi!

Seattle Gift Show 2008

Seattle Gift Show 08 was held from September 16 to 19. This was our first time to exhibit for any gift show, so there were many things we could discovered at the show. How to display products effectively or how to behave at the booth so that we can get attention from attendees. These questions were always in my mind during the show.

The most impressive thing was how other exhibitors established relationship with their customers. Because many of exhibitors have participated this show for many years, there were a lot of attendees who just came to see their favorite companies' products. For example, McSteven's Inc. They just sold cocoa or hot chocolate, but I was so surprised when I saw many customers made a line and were waiting to be helped. WHY? They said " this is our back yard, we have come this show for many many years."

I decide to participate the Seattle Gift Show next year, too. And I hope my company can establish good and solid relationship with customers, just like McSteven's.

Tea Tasting at I Love Sushi Restaurant

Since the beginning of July, I have been doing the free tea sampling event at the I Love Sushi at Lake Bellevue in Washington state. Every Monday and Wednesday, I go to the restaurant from 6pm and serve 3 kinds of tea samples - Sen cha, Hoji cha, and Genmai cha.

During summer, I'm serving iced green teas, and customers really love their refreshing taste. Especially, iced Genmai cha has received a lot of compliments (Genmai cha is the one selected as the best tea at the World Tea Championship). If you are interested in trying our teas, please visit I Love Sushi Lake Bellevue.

At the end, I'd like to mention about I Love Sushi. Honestly, I Love Sushi is really nice restaurant. It has a wide menu variety and abundant of alcohol selection. Outside view is nice as well. Most importantly, their passion for quality cuisine and customer service is great. If you would like to experience the real Japanese culinary, I strongly recommend I LOVE SUSHI.

For more information about the tea sampling event or I Love Sushi, please visit;

http://lakebellevue.ilovesushi.com/event072008.htm

Intangible National Treasure - TEMOMI

If you would like to try the ancient taste of teas, "Temomi-cha" tea is your choice. Temomi means "hand kneading," and cha means "tea" in Japanese. In short, Temomi-cha can be said that is the 100% hand-made green tea. Its taste and flavor are completely different from teas now we are drinking; it has really deep taste and green flavor. When the Sen cha was invented about 300 years ago, all the process to make the tea was taken by humans' hands. It started from hand pick of tea leaves, and then steaming, kneading, and drying process were performed only by hands. Today, all of these processes are mechanized and the Temomi-technique is almost forgotten.

My mother has striven to preserve the Temomi-technique since 1995. Right now, she has a teaching license and has held the Temomi-cha event for public since 2005. The pictures above are the Temomi-cha event held on May 2008 at my father's factory. I was very sad that I couldn't participate the event this year because I wan in the U.S.

In near future, I'm going to import the Temomi-cha into the U.S. I'd like to have a chance to introduce the Temomi-cha to American audience.

The Best Blended/Flavored Green Tea!

May 30th late afternoon, the winners of the World Tea Championship was announced. And... our Genmai cha was selected as the best tea in the Blended/Flavored Green Tea Category!

Right now, almost all American people know "green tea is good for health" and demands for green tea products are very high. That encourages many tea companies to invent a new blend of green tea to meet the American customers preference. Mint green tea. Ginger green tea. Lemon green tea... There are hundreds of new-blend green teas in the U.S. market.

This time, many of these new-blend green teas competed in the World Tea Championship. And what I was impressed was Genmai cha, which has 70-year history in Japan, was recognized as the best tea among them. I'm really happy with this result, but more importantly I realized how special the Japanese culture and history was.

World Tea Championship!

At the World Tea Expo (5/30/08 - 6/1/08), a tea-quality contest called World Tea Championship will be held, and there was a preliminary because over 200 entries were submitted from over 30 companies. And, our teas were nominated one of the top 5 teas in Japanese Style Green Tea and Blended/Flavored Green Tea Category!

Our Sen cha and Hoji cha are two of the five finalists in the Japanese Style Green Tea Category, and Genmai cha is one of the five finalists in the Blended/Flavored Green Tea Category. The winner will be announced at the World Tea Expo.

This was not easy decision for me to participate to the contest because our teas have already received many awards in Japan. If we couldn't been selected as the finalists, what does it mean? It makes our reputation and the brand image down. Right now, I'm glad that our tea was at least selected as the finalists. Hope we will win the contest and bring the trophy back to Seattle!

Japanese Tea Adviser Certificate

Finally, I received a certificate of Nihoncha (Japanese Tea) Adviser last month. After I decided to be involved in the tea business in 2003, I started studying about Japanese green tea. Although I was born as the second son of Tea Maestro SUGIMOTO and spent a lot of time in his tea factory, there was a tons of things I didn't know, and it took a long time to learn all of them.

The most impressive thing for me is there are still many unknown things about tea, not only Japanese tea, because the tea has very long history. Where did a tea plant originally come from? Who was the first person drink the tea? Who brought the tea plants to Japan? When was that? These are just a few examples.

Right now, many people start recognizing about health benefits of green tea, but it's just recent that these health benefits have been found. In 2006, there were over 1,000 of studies focusing on the relationship between health and green tea consumption, and now, many studies are still in progress all over the world. I believe more and more health benefits will be found in the future, and green tea will be recognized as the healthiest beverage throughout the world.