I had been drinking matcha for two years before I went to Japan. I thought I knew what I was doing. I had a proper bamboo whisk, a ceramic chawan I'd ordered from a ceramics seller in Montreal, and a shelf of ceremonial-grade tins. Then I sat down in a tea house in Gion on a Tuesday morning in March and understood, immediately, that I had no idea what I was doing.
Starting in Uji
Uji is a small city south of Kyoto and it is, without argument, the matcha capital of the world. The region's misty valley climate, soil acidity, and centuries of cultivation practice produce tea leaves that become the raw material for the finest ceremonial grades globally. The train ride from Kyoto takes 17 minutes. I went four times.
The first cup I had in Uji tasted like grass and rain and something green I couldn't name. It was the least sweet thing I'd ever paid money for and I immediately ordered another.
Tsuen, the oldest tea house in Japan, sits on the bridge over the Ujigawa. The menu has not meaningfully changed in 900 years. They serve matcha with a small sweet, a wagashi, soft and subtly anko-filled, and the ritual of the pairing clicks something into place. The bitterness of the matcha and the restrained sweetness of the cake aren't at war. They're completing each other.
The Kyoto spots, ranked honestly
I made a point of hitting every recommended spot and a few that weren't. Here's how they stacked up:
What I brought home
Two tins of Ippodo's Kan-no-shiro, a pack of the thin wagashi from Nakamura-ro that didn't survive the flight in the condition I wanted, and a recalibrated sense of what ceremonial grade actually means. Not a marketing tier. A preparation tradition that requires a specific grade of leaf to actually work.
If you go: prioritize a morning in Uji, a counter seat at Ippodo Kyoto, and at least one standing cup at a Gion Tsujiri. Skip the matcha Kit Kats at the airport. They will disappoint you after the real thing.