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.

Season of SAKURA

Japanese people have special place in their heart for cherry blossom (SAKURA). The flower is very beautiful but fugacious, and we, Japanese, identify our own lives with the life of the cherry blossom. Also, the cherry blossom season is April which all of schools and companies start their new year in Japan. Because of this, cherry blossom is the symbol of a new start of life.

In Japan, we have very nice culture called "OHANAMI." People drink alcohol under the tree of cherry blossom and have party with family, friends, or colleagues. During the season, people go outside with favorite alcohol, drink a lot, and get drunk like crazy. At the famous park in Tokyo, you can see hundreds of drunken people dancing under the tree.

The Busiest Season is comming!

For tea producers in Japan, new harvest season after the winter starts from the end of April. Now, farmers are waiting for their tea leaves get matured enough; once the leaves get matured, the harvest starts. They wake up 4 o'clock everyday and work until late night. The reason they have to work such a long time is because they have to finish the harvest before the leaves get hardened. Also in Japan, consumers' demand for Shin-cha (new harvest tea) is very high, and it makes the tea producers much busier.

Even if I have to work like crazy, I like this season. My town is enveloped in the flavor of steaming tea leaves (because in Shizuoka prefecture, there are thousands of tea farmers, and they start the harvest at the same time). Flavor of tea leaves give me energy and let me relax after the work. If you have chance, I recommend to visit there during the season.

Go Mariners!

Finally, Major Leage was back! Yesterday was the day I had waited for 6 months. Go Mariners!

Eric Bedard was struggled yesterday, but nice patient! You should be good next game. Today is our young hero, Felix Hernandez. He will duplicate the Opening Day of 2007.

I don't compromise on the product quality

In business world, we cannot compromise the quality of products. Even a small mistake, it shouldn't be accept. Cultural differences don't matter, it's always the same even in Japan and the U.S. Since I was born and raised in Japan, I might be too sensitive and nervous in terms of the products' quality? I don't think so.

This was my first time to do business with California based box-design and manufacturing company and had big troubles and disappointment with them. The manufacturing turn over was supporsed to be 3 and half weeks, but it took 7 weeks until I received my order. During the manufacturing, they had sent some box samples, but these samples always had defective. Everytime, I told them about the mistakes on the samples, and they fixed and said there are no more problems. Finally, I received my order last week, and... there was big vocabrary mistake. How can they make such a mistake?

I feel sorry that the company has to re-manifacture my order, but I don't compromise on the product quality. It's my promise to my customers.

How nice metro is!

Every time I went to Seattle downtown, parking was headache for me. Street parking was very hard to find, and public parking was expensive.

Today, I found excellent transportation - METRO!! I used to use the metro when I didn't have a car, but since I bought my car, the metro has been quite away from my life. This afternoon, I went to DAISO (DAISO is excellent as well) in the West Lake Center. I used the metro from my office in the International district. I didn't know West Lake Center was only three station away from my office and amazingly it was FREE! How convenient it is.

From next time, I will park my car at my office and use the metro for sure. Let's see how much I can save for this.