Michael Plant wrote in message ...
Mike,

I believe that the biggest bottler of teas in Japan is Ito En, which has a
store in New York City where they feature loose teas, not the bottled thing.
Their bottled (plasticked?) tea is available around the city. I'm told that
in Japan it's a vending machine thing to a large extent. Why not contact
them and ask them? Who knows, they might give you lots of good information
about production. You never know until you ask.

Michael

True dat. Itoen is the oldest and biggest and probably least likely to
let you in on any secrets because they're doing their best to break
into the US market. Have you seen their site? Unfortunately they seem
to sell some of the major teas that they have here in Japan, but they
seem to offer quite a lot of US oriented packaging. Fairly fluffy. But
I guess that is to be expected when your market is primarily composed
of manga-geeks, samurai nerds, and health-food hippies. They have a
haiku contest. Sad. I would rather see Coca Cola have a haiku contest
and Itoen offer their super popular O-i ocha.