Uji matcha♥ #Kyototravelmemories #obsessedwithmatcha #theloveisreal #relaxingteabreak #traveltreats #TBT

The matcha the duck and I currently use claims to be from Uji. So, whenever we make ourselves a relaxing cup of oat matcha latte, we remember that time we enjoyed a delicious cup of Uji matcha in Uji, “the town where the most beautiful matcha lives”(according to some weirdo in a video)! We briefly mentioned this mouthwatering matcha memory in the audiovisual report about our short Kyoto stint many years ago. However, we think it’s too deliciously beautiful to not share again. Uji was one of the last stops during our cold Kyoto autumn adventure. Sitting at that charming tea shop called Ocha no Kanbayashi, enjoying a cup of Uji matcha, and chatting with our lovely Kyoto travel companions made the duck and me sad that this terrific trip was ending. It did make for one of our favorite Japan memories, though, visual and culinary (not for the cold, however, that we still felt in our bones days after we had returned to Tokyo). Five (aromatic tea) leaves for this extraordinary experience! 🍃♥🍁♥🍃

The duck and I can’t wait for our next Japan adventure – whenever that may be.
What are your favorite gustatory memories?

About Advent calendars

This year, on top of helping the duck and me impress others by always knowing the date and, after some slow math, how many days we have to wait until it’s Christmas, our Advent calendar can also be upgraded: By adding a few more treats ourselves it can be used as an end-of-2020-calendar. Isn’t that great?! We’ll start looking for tea bags to add to one of our tea Advent calendars tomorrow! While 2021 will likely continue where 2020 left off it does have a more optimistic outlook, don’t you think? The Advent calendar that the duck is posing with in today’s photo is actually from 2019 when we received it as a gift but decided to hold on to it until this year since we had already bought ourselves another tea calendar and thought that having two different tea varieties to try every day was a bit too exciting for us to handle (little did we know that we’d be given two more tea Advent calendars this year. What to do?). Despite all that tea the duck and I actually are considering getting an additional non-tea Advent calendar, especially since we’re not crazy and energetic enough to do a blog Advent calendar as we did last year (not a fresh one, anyway).
We’ve gone through quite a few interesting Advent calendars throughout the years. And that is exactly what we want to write about today:

Reading Mrs Dalloway

Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway has been sitting in the duck and my bookcase for a while now. We bought it on a quest to read more ‘classics’ but somehow never got to reading it. Two years ago we watched The Hours with the duck’s very first friend B which reminded us that we still had not read Mrs Dalloway. When we moved to Berlin the duck and I decided that this book had to come with us. Last summer, as we were about to finally read it, we learned that the story’s main action takes place on a Wednesday in the middle of June. June had already passed. So, we put the book back in our bookcase and put a note in our calendar that made June 17th 2020 Mrs Dalloway day. And that’s exactly what we did last Wednesday: We read a book in the perfect circumstances (well, at least when it comes to time. I wouldn’t call 2020 perfect).

We also decided that we would use this special day to have a cup of the Sakura flavored Earl Grey tea that our friend Y got us for Christmas. It’s always nice to have a secondary plan, as well. So, without further ado, here is what we did:

Tea

The duck and I LOVE tea, and by that I mean the liquid kind you can drink from a mug (we’re terrible at gossiping). When we were living in Japan we fell in love with the green tea varieties you could buy there, so much so that when our lovely friend C asked us if there’s anything she could send us from Japan, we responded by sending her a photo of a green tea pouch. Nothing else. We’re those people. We miss being able to buy bottled green tea from the vending machine around the corner even though, cheap as we are, we usually got some at the supermarket at a much better price. Last summer when the duck and I were suffering in our hot (and not yet super beautiful) Berlin bedroom we spent hours browsing all kinds of shopping sites for a nice big thermos so that we could steep our imported tea in the evening, chill it down in the refrigerator overnight, and fill it up to go the next morning. Our laziness and stinginess were stronger. Instead, we made do with drinking our Japanese green tea hot out of a mug, like normal Europeans.
We also knew that if we didn’t ration our 100 green tea bags, we would drink them within a month. So the duck and I had to look at other tea options and that reminded us of the one thing we were not so happy with in Japan: the selection of non-Japanese tea and the crazy prices for the few varieties the grocery stores did carry (I mean 250 yen for 10 bags? Who has that kind of money?!)! But now that we’re living in Berlin (baby), we buy all the non-Japanese tea we want and nobody can stop us!

It’s actually gotten to a point where 90% of our daily water intake is through tea and when new friends and acquaintances are asked to name our cult or design a casket for us you bet it’s tea-related! Actually, the duck and I recently found a picture of a portrait that our former flatmate had drawn on our door: me with my hoodie on (I’m always cold, man) sipping tea from my personal mug.
Even though the duck and my appreciation for tea goes way back, we have recently noticed that we have, indeed, gone through a few tea phases. And, because we’re nice, we’re happy to share our most recent teanalasys with you:

Cute Matcha Latte ♥ #delicious #cutestuffforlife #Shinjukucafe #liquidheaven #TBT

There has never been a title more fitting on this blog than this one. At least that’s what I think (is that how hashtags are used? I have no idea). Since the duck and I don’t have an active Instagram account we decided that, today, we will turn our blog into our own little cute food pic sharing platform.

About three months ago we met our friend to check out a cute little cafe close to Shinjuku station. I believe its name was Coto Cafe. The duck and I ordered a matcha latte with brown sugar syrup. In our excitement for a hot matcha drink we could not even anticipate the cuteness in which it was going to be presented to us. That sure was a happy first cafe experience as new Tokyo locals ♥
Do recommend. 5/5 ducks for surprise cuteness ♪

We hope you enjoyed our little alternative format adventure. It was fun doing something slightly different for a change. I think we did the duck’s afternoon tea friend proud.

Tea you next time 🙂

Food, food, food, oh my gosh, food!

As much as the duck and I pride ourselves on being able to easily adapt to a new environment, there are a few things that we just don’t want to can’t do without. The duck needs those oats and I need that tea. And, after our first few shopping trips, we realized that the supermarkets within (a reasonable) walking distance from our home would not be able to cater to our intense tea and oatmeal cravings and our existence as stingy sustenance supporters. Remember the 350 yen mini pack of oats and 25 yen tea bags we found going grocery shopping? With our tea and oat consumption we’d end up broke and incredibly sad after a few weeks. So, in order to keep our cheap lifestyle more or less intact, we decided to give the Internet’s grocery section a try and ordered some personal happiness in a box off iHerb.

Just look at how happy the duck was when the parcel finally arrived!
Not having much experience in ordering food online, we made ourselves a little list of things to look out for the next few times (it might not be of any use to you, but we’ll still put it on here – nobody can stop us, haha!):