Fukujuen was founded in 1790 by Iyemon Fukui in Kamikoma, in what was then Yamashiro Province and is now Kizugawa City on Kyoto's southern edge — a location that sat directly on the trade routes linking Osaka and Kobe to the Yamato and Iga highways.
Best for Uji green tea from a 1790 trading house that pioneered
Fukujuen was founded in 1790 by Iyemon Fukui in Kamikoma, in what was then Yamashiro Province and is now Kizugawa City on Kyoto's southern edge — a location that sat directly on the trade routes linking Osaka and Kobe to the Yamato and Iga highways. That position let the young house grow into a wholesaler and trading post, exporting Uji tea out through Kobe port at a time when overseas shipping was becoming central to Japan's tea economy.
As the industry shifted toward domestic sales, Fukujuen shifted with it, supplying tea shops nationwide and pioneering mail-order sales of Ujicha through Japan's postal parcel system — an early instance of a regional tea house reaching customers it could never have served over the counter. In 2007 the company opened the Fukujuen Uji Tea Workshop specifically to teach visitors the traditions behind Uji tea culture, from cultivation through processing.
More than two centuries after Iyemon Fukui opened his trading post, Fukujuen still runs on the same underlying idea that built it: getting Uji tea to people who aren't standing in Uji, first by rail freight and post, now through a global online shop carrying the Fukujuen name.
Gion Tsujiri traces its family's Uji tea-growing ties back over 800 years, though the shop dates to 1860 and its Gion storefront to 1948. Its 1978 tea room, Saryo Tsujiri, built the Tsujiri Parfait and other matcha desserts on the same leaf.
Best for Matcha parfaits at Saryo Tsujiri
Gion Tsujiri's own account puts its family's ties to Uji tea cultivation at more than 800 years, but the retail business as it operates today dates to 1860, when Riemon Tsuji I and Tokujiro II founded a tea shop in Uji itself. The third generation opened the Gion storefront in 1948, on Shijo-dori, selling leaf grown and processed in Uji and grinding matcha in-house for both tins to take home and drinks made on site. Thirty years later, in 1978, the fifth generation added Saryo Tsujiri on the shop's second and third floors - described by the family as a tea-drinking dojo, built around the idea that Uji tea could be eaten as much as drunk. That idea became the Tsujiri Parfait, layers of matcha jelly, ice cream, shiratama rice dumplings and sweet azuki bean built around the same matcha the shop sells by the tin, alongside anmitsu, zenzai and seasonal shaved ice on the same menu. The tea room draws crowds on its own terms now, often with a wait, but the shop below still functions as it always has: a Uji tea retailer first, with the dessert operation built directly on top of it rather than run as a separate concept. Few matcha parfaits in Kyoto carry the weight of a tea-growing lineage; here, one is served plated with a spoon.
Ippodo has sold tea from the same Teramachi Street address in Kyoto since 1717, when Rihei Watanabe opened it as Omiya; it was renamed Ippodo in 1846. Its Kaboku Tearoom serves matcha, gyokuro and sencha from roughly 30 varieties sold at the counter.
Best for Matcha, gyokuro, sencha and Kyoto green tea
Ippodo traces to 1717, when Rihei Watanabe opened a shop called Omiya on Teramachi Street to sell tea and ceramics along the eastern edge of the Kyoto Imperial Palace grounds. In 1846 the shop took the name Ippodo -- "preserve one" -- at the suggestion of Prince Yamashina, a regular customer who wanted the shop to hold to a single standard of quality rather than diversify. That Teramachi Street address remains the flagship today, still selling around 30 variants of matcha, gyokuro, sencha and bancha from an old-fashioned counter where staff talk customers through the differences before a purchase. Attached to the shop is the Kaboku Tearoom, open through the afternoon and closed the second Wednesday of each month, where the same teas sold by the tin can be ordered whisked or steeped and drunk on the spot -- a rare chance to taste a grade of gyokuro or ceremonial matcha before committing to buy it loose. Three centuries of continuous operation on the same street, through a name change and the shift from an Edo-period tea-and-ceramics shop to a global specialty retailer, have kept Ippodo's reputation tied to Kyoto rather than to any single signature blend: the counter conversation and the tearoom tasting are as much the product as the tea itself.
Kurasu began in 2013 as a homeware shop in Kyoto, selling ceramics and everyday objects before coffee became its focus.
Best for Japanese pour-over gear alongside house-roasted Nishijin Roastery beans, shipped worldwide
Kurasu began in 2013 as a homeware shop in Kyoto, selling ceramics and everyday objects before coffee became its focus. It has since built out its own Nishijin Roastery, where it roasts both single-origin lots and house blends, and expanded into cafes and worldwide shipping without ever dropping the homeware sensibility that started it.
The shop's retail floor reflects that dual identity: house-roasted beans and drip bags sit alongside a curated run of Japanese brewing equipment — Hario, Origami, and Kalita gear — plus the ceramics that were Kurasu's original stock in trade. It's as much a source for the tools of pour-over brewing as for the coffee itself, which is part of why home baristas outside Japan order from it directly.
That trajectory, from a homeware storefront to a roastery with global shipping in a decade, has made Kurasu one of Kyoto's more distinctive coffee destinations — a shop that treats the brewing gear with the same care as the beans, and sells both to a following well beyond the city.
Marukyu Koyamaen has grown and stone-milled matcha in Uji since about 1704, supplying grades from culinary to ceremonial. Its Nishinotoin flagship in central Kyoto, a renovated machiya, includes the Motoan tea house and garden.
Best for Uji matcha and Motoan tea-house tastings
Marukyu Koyamaen traces its founding to about 1704, when Kyujiro Koyama began growing and processing tea in Ogura, a district of Uji regarded since the medieval period as Japan's premier tea-growing area. Three hundred years on, the company still mills its own matcha on traditional stone mills, taking leaf through hand harvesting, steaming, drying and grinding before blending it across a full range of grades - from culinary matcha sold to confectioners and food manufacturers up to ceremonial grades supplied to tea schools. The Nishinotoin Tea Shop, the company's flagship in central Kyoto's Karasuma-Oike area, occupies a renovated machiya townhouse and sells the same lineup carried at the Uji base. Attached to it is Motoan, a tea house with seating toward the back and a small garden giving a glimpse of a chashitsu built for formal tea ceremony; the cafe menu runs through the house's own matcha, gyokuro and sencha, usually paired with a seasonal wagashi. Both shop and tea house close on Wednesdays and the third Tuesday of the month, a rhythm that reads less like retail hours and more like a workshop that happens to also serve tea. For a house this old, the offer stays narrow and specific: one region, one family's stone mills, and a grading system built for people who already know the difference between grades rather than a general audience.
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗