More than an hour before Nakamura Tokichi Honten tea house opens, a queue has formed along its outside wall and down the main street of Uji. When the doors are unlocked, each person will be allowed to buy one small metal tin of matcha powder.
Among the nationalities represented in the line are the US, Thailand, the Netherlands, China, Greece and Argentina. Many devotees have spent days in Uji — a picturesque town outside Kyoto famed for its roasters and its centuries-old teacup craftsmen — to secure sufficient quantities of their prize. What little stock the shops have is usually sold out completely within an hour.
It is a microcosm of global matcha mania. Jiro Katahira, a shaggy-haired 41-year-old tea-obsessed farmer, says he is inundated with emails from traders, cafés and retailers around the world begging for the umami-flavoured green powder made from tea leaves.