Maruien Chaho (まるい園茶舗).

Maruien Chaho was founded in 1920 and sits at 357-22 Sunayama-cho, inside the Sunayama Ginza Southern Cross shopping arcade, two minutes on foot from the south exit of Hamamatsu station. It is a classic Japanese tea shop of the kind that has grown rare: more than twenty green teas on the shelf, most of them sold by weight, with deliveries to offices and homes around the city and parcels sent nationwide. It opens from 10:00 to 18:30 and closes on Sundays.

The house handles around thirty green teas and blends almost all of them itself, choosing leaf from different growing areas each year and each season and aiming at body and sweetness in the cup. Its senchas Hoo and Gyokuho are cut with kabusecha, the briefly shaded tea between sencha and gyokuro, which is where their rounder taste comes from. Above them stand four gyokuros, from Gyokukan to Koba, and three matchas, Hatsumukashi, Chiyomukashi and Zuiho, in 40 g.

The rest of the counter is the everyday side of Shizuoka tea: a kukicha called Karigane and a lighter Shiraore, a konacha made from gyokuro dust, the roasted hojicha Hoo, two genmaichas and one with matcha, and a 160 g bag of aracha, the unrefined tea with stems and dust still in it that the shop sells for drinking without ceremony. There are also usucha-to and usucha-arare, the sweetened matcha drinks of old Shizuoka, in the house's own recipe. Only some items carry an online buy button; the rest is bought in person.