Odaya Tea

Odaya Tea is Shop 124 in Sunnybank Plaza, on Mains Road, next to Kmart, with a second store at Robina Town Centre on the Gold Coast. The range is Japanese and nothing else: Uji, Shizuoka, Yame and Aichi teas, plus handmade matcha bowls from Japan and other teaware and tea tools. The company says it works directly with a long-established tea farm in Fushimi, Kyoto, whose methods go back more than 270 years, and that it also works with farms in Yame and Sayama. It also keeps a wholesale and commercial range for businesses.

The shelf is organised by grade, and the grades have names. Ume, the plum, is culinary; Take, the bamboo, is premium; Jyu, longevity, is ceremonial; and Matsu, the pine, marks the super-premium genmaicha. The Uji sencha, genmaicha and gyokuro come from the first harvest of the year, are certified organic under Japan's JAS standard and are labelled as 2026 spring harvest, with its production and best-before dates printed on each product page. All three come in the same 100 g pack, which makes the grades easy to compare.

Five teas show the range from the top down: an organic Uji gyokuro in the Jyu grade, packed in a traditional tea tin; an Uji sencha in the Take grade, wrapped in paper over a foil bag; a Matsu-grade genmaicha of first-harvest sencha and roasted brown rice; an organic hojicha powder milled in Uji, also sold in a 500 g refill; and a Japanese matcha made for baking, desserts and lattes. Matcha bowls and matcha cookies share the counter, and online orders ship Australia-wide.