Chappaya / Sonoda Seicha (茶ッ葉屋・薗田製茶).

Chappaya started in August 2006 with no shop and no capital: its founder went out selling with flyers and tea samples and built a delivery business, then a wholesale trade with tea shops, roadside stations and hotels. In 2014 it opened its own store and tea-finishing factory at 313-4 Nishizuka-cho, in what was then Higashi-ku, and in 2016 it split the names: Sonoda Seicha for the factory, Chappaya for the shop. Online sales began in 2017 through a BASE shop.

The shelf is organised by how the leaf was treated and then by grade, each grade a single kanji from Bi at the bottom through Do and Ko to Ki at the top. There is an extra-deep-steamed sencha, steamed so long the leaf turns almost to powder and the cup comes out thick and mild; a light-steamed sencha with the sharper edge of the older Shizuoka style; a shaded kabuse sencha; a dense-flavoured sencha; and a house-roasted green tea made on a roaster the firm co-developed in 2017, with a far-infrared roaster added in 2021.

The building also holds the café, opened in 2020 inside the shop and factory and enlarged the following year, where the teas are served with sweets made from them, and a room built in 2021 for factory visits. Tea sales run 10:00 to 18:00 and the café the same hours with last orders at 17:30; both close on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and over New Year. There are fourteen parking spaces between the shop and the lot across the street, marked by a banner reading 茶.