Just wanted to give an update on my trip to Japan. I did not,
unfortunately, have time to go to Uji or Shikuoka. Luckily, good tea
was available almost everywhere, and, despite the fact that I don't
really speak Japanese, I sat down and sampled green tea at a couple of
different stores. I had a particularly good experience at Ippodo in
Kyoto, which has an English website (http://www.ippodo-tea.co.jp/en/)
and ships worldwide. It's a famous old store (what we would call a
lao zi hao in Chinese) and was recommended by a friend of a friend who
grew up in Kyoto and another tea ceremony devotee in Tokyo, as well as
by our hotel. We were initially ignored when we walked in, which as
it turned out was due to the fact that only one of the shop workers
spoke passable English. I sampled some interesting sencha there,
which was so filling that I mistook it for gyokuro, but ended up
buying only matcha. The lone English-speaker then gave us a really
superb demonstration of how to whisk in the attached teahouse. If you
find yourself in Kyoto with an hour to spare, I would say it's the
place to go.

I was also impressed that matcha was available in a number of temples,
teahouses and public gardens throughout the country, frequently not
advertised in English, and served with varying degrees of formality.