Adventures of Anette: Tea

Monday, May 26, 2014

第5回東京蚤の市: Blancway Tea Store

Anette 10:45:00 PM

少し前に東京オーヴァル京王閣で行われた
第5回東京蚤の市で友達のちあきさんのお店のお手伝いをさせてもらいました。

A little while back I participated in the 5^th Tokyo Flea Market (東京蚤の市) held in Keioukaku Velodrome (京王閣, also known as Tokyo Oval Keiokaku) together with my friend Chiaki, who was displaying products from her store Blancway.

Nordic Tea

彼女は二年前に自分のお店をオープンして、渋谷で高級な北欧紅茶や北欧グッズを販売しています。今回の蚤の市では紅茶を中心に販売しており、なかでもスウェーデン王室御用達ノーベル賞晩餐会で饗される希少な紅茶も取り扱っていました。

Chiaki opened up her own store two years ago, and now she is selling Nordic tea and Nordic goods in Shibuya. Her main product for the stand at Tokyo Flea Market was Swedish tea, and she had among other things brought with her tea that is served at the Nobel Banquet.

人気を集めている北欧紅茶

私が東京蚤の市に参加させてもらったのは二日目でしたが、Blancwayはかなりお客さんの注目を集めており既に売り切れになっていた紅茶もありました。

I participated on the second day of the flea market, and by then there was already a number of her products that had been sold out.

お店でお手伝いできる機会はなかなか無いので楽しい一日でした。商品の説明をすることも楽しいですが、やっぱり自分の日本語は商品を説明するにはまだまだ足りないなぁという感覚もありました。これからも言語頑張らないとなぁ・・

I had a lot of fun helping out selling tea at the flea market. But although it is interesting to talk about the different types of teas to the customers it is hard to be able to properly explain the technical details related to the tea in Japanese. I guess I have to keep on working to improve my language skills..!

Various Swedish tea

Cute Swedish tea houses

ちあきさんは渋谷に北欧専門店を持っています。そこで北欧デザインの物や北欧紅茶を販売しています。宜しければ是非彼女のホームページや楽天ページをご覧になってください(^_^)／
You can visit my friend Chiaki's store through the links below!

関係あるページ：
http://www.rakuten.co.jp/blancway/
http://blancway.com/
ラベル：日本語あり

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Tea

Colorful Event: Day-trip to Uji (宇治)!

Anette 6:51:00 PM

At Ritsumeikan there is a club that is making events to bring exchange students and Japanese students closer together. This club is called “Colorful”, and every month they arrange different events for the students to participate in. This weekend they had set up a plan for a day-trip to a place south of Kyoto called Uji. This place is famous for various things, such as the World Heritage Site Byodo-in (平等院) which you might recognize from the 10-yen coin.

平等院

A 10-yen coin, depicting the Byodo-in temple

Another picture of Byodo-in

Tamara and I went directly to Byodo-in, and met up with the others there. In total I think we were between 40 and 50 students attending the event, it turned out to be quite popular. Considering the weather, which was beautiful, it’s no wonder why so many decided to show up. Although I have to say that it was almost a bit too hot.. So after the sightseeing in Byodo-in almost all of us went to buy maccha ice-cream.!

A machine producing tea

You can buy green tea in different qualities

Uji-tea

Uji is proud of its tea

Uji is actually famous for its maccha (抹茶), or green tea. Or more generally: products where green tee can be included, such as crepes, ice creams or takoyaki. You name it.

Time for green tea ice-cream

Starting point of the traditional Japanese streets

For those of you familiar with older Japanese literature you might also have heard of Murasaki Shikibu’s story about the romantic Genji (The tale of Genji/源氏の物語). Parts of this classical novel took place in Uji, and walking around in the area you can see statues depicting some of its characters.

Genji and one of his ladies

Totally random: a phone booth with a phoenix on top..

Another Genji-statue by the river

After the ice creams and sightseeing in the traditional streets it was time for luck by the river. We had a good time meeting new people, eating lunch and just relaxing in the sun. From time to time some tourist boats passed by, with Japanese obasans waving at us, so we had a little bit of entertainment as well.

Enjoying lunch by the river

When most of the other students went back to Kyoto we stayed behind with a small group of students who weren’t ready to leave just yet. We checked out the Uji-jinja shrine, and on our way back to the station we ended up in a store where a lady were making clothes out of old kimono. Her husband played a flute for us, and we felt they both went out of their way to make us feel welcome. After having tried on some of the kimono-clothes accompanied by some photos with the owners we finally decided to end the trip and go back to Kyoto.

Uji Jinja

Flute performance

Group picture with the nice Japanese lady

It was a really great trip, I’m already looking forward to what the club is going to plan for next month. Thanks to Colorful for a fun event!

A colorful group of students.. ^^

About Me

A modern-day shield-maiden who loves to explore the unbeaten paths of the world. From her base in Tokyo, Anette takes on both rural and urban challenges, and on her path, she has overcome anything from natural wilderness and cultural barriers to commuting in overcrowded Tokyo trains.

Life is too short to be stuck on one page, and this mindset reflects the diversity of Anette’s blog.
Besides being a career woman she is also a globetrotter, with 39 countries and counting.
No challenge too big, no adventure too small!

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