Frequently Asked Questions

We accept credit cards (VISA, Mastercard, JCB, AMEX), PayPal, Apple Pay, convenience store payment, bank transfer, postal transfer, and cash on delivery (Yamato Collect). Convenience store payments are supported at Seven-Eleven, FamilyMart, Lawson, Ministop, and Seicomart.

Bank transfer fees and cash on delivery fees are paid by the customer. Cash on delivery is not available when the person placing the order and the recipient are different. Our bank account details are on the About Our Store page.

Yes. Our phone number is 0265-35-8384 (9:00 to 17:00), and our fax number is 0265-48-0042 (24 hours). You can download the fax order form as a PDF.

Credit cards cannot be used for fax orders.

Please make the payment within 7 days of placing your order. For orders delivered in Japan, we usually ship on the next business day after we confirm your payment.

If you make a transfer through online banking outside bank business hours, it is processed as a scheduled transfer, and we cannot confirm the payment until the next bank business day.

You can cancel your order before it ships. Please contact us as soon as possible by email (info@hojotea.com) or phone. If you have already paid, we will refund the full amount. Once your order has shipped, it cannot be cancelled. If you refuse delivery and the package is returned to us, you will be charged the shipping cost both ways.

Once an order is complete, we cannot add items or change the delivery date. Please check your order carefully before you submit it.

Shipping is a flat 660 yen anywhere in Japan, including Okinawa, Hokkaido, and remote islands. Orders of 8,000 yen or more (tax included) ship free.

Each order can go to one address only, so please place a separate order for each address. Free shipping is judged per order: each order ships free if it is 8,000 yen or more (tax included).

If you would like to send to three or more addresses at once, please contact us.

For orders delivered in Japan: for cash on delivery, orders placed by 9:00 on a weekday ship the same day, and later orders ship on the next business day. For bank transfer or postal transfer, we usually ship on the next business day after we confirm your payment. Depending on stock, it may take one more day. Overseas orders usually ship within 3 business days.

Our business days are Monday through Friday (we are closed on weekends, public holidays, and our own closing days). If an order will be delayed because of a busy period or the items ordered, we will contact you by email.

Yes. Please choose your preferred delivery date and time in the shopping cart.

The earliest date you can choose is 5 days ahead. Time slots are morning, 14:00 to 16:00, 16:00 to 18:00, 18:00 to 20:00, and 19:00 to 21:00. If you need the tea sooner, please write in the order notes or contact us by email or phone. If we cannot deliver on the requested date because of your location, we will contact you by email.

Within Japan, we ship by Yamato Transport (Takkyubin).

Yes. We ship overseas by Japan Post. EMS takes about 1 week and International Air Packet about 10 days. The shipping fee is calculated at checkout, and we email you a tracking number when the order ships.

For the United States, we calculate the import duties and pay them before shipping. Your package will not be held at customs, and you will not be asked to pay duties or fees on delivery.

For all other countries, customs duties and taxes charged by the destination country are paid by the recipient.

We ship by Japan Post as standard. With DHL and UPS, each company's customs broker calculates the duties after the package leaves Japan, so both the duty rate applied and the handling fee vary from broker to broker. We avoid this problem by calculating the duties ourselves and paying them in advance. If you would like your order sent by DHL, please contact us by email.

Because our products are food, we do not accept returns or exchanges as a rule.

However, if the product arrives defective or is not what you ordered, please contact us within 7 days of delivery and we will deal with it right away. In that case, we pay the shipping.

After opening, keep the tea in a container that seals as tightly as possible, in a cool, dark place away from direct sunlight, heat, and humidity. Storing it with a desiccant or an oxygen absorber keeps it fresh longer.

If you keep tea in the refrigerator, be careful: taking it in and out can cause condensation, which damages the tea. Teas meant for aging, such as Raw Pu-erh, are stored differently, so please also read the product page.

Fresh tea is delicious, but tea also ages in storage, and in many cases its flavor becomes more expressive. Pu-erh and some oolong teas are well known for aging. However, black tea, white tea, dark tea, and even green tea can develop a distinctive flavor as they age.

For details, please see Aging of Tea.

Most of the teas we carry are naturally grown with no pesticides and no fertilizers. Some come from low-pesticide gardens that follow Japanese pesticide standards. For these, we have pesticide analyses done by labs such as SGS and Eurofins to check the actual residue levels. For Taiwanese oolong tea, we test every lot we buy for more than 500 pesticides.

Whatever the quantity, we file a food import notification, import the tea through official channels, and have it inspected by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. After it arrives, we sort all of our tea by hand in Japan, control its moisture, and pack it oxygen-free. For details, please see Our Safety Management.

Many obstetricians say that one or two cups of tea are not a problem. We recommend brewing high-quality tea light and short. High-quality tea contains a lot of iron, and its minerals dissolve well even in a light brew. Because each infusion takes only a few seconds, very little caffeine comes out.

For details, please see Can pregnant women drink tea? If you have concerns about your health or your caffeine intake, please ask your doctor.

We have met hundreds of families with children. In our experience, small children care less about an intense flavor and more about a rich aftertaste, a smooth texture, and a lower degree of fermentation. Raw Pu-erh and white tea are the most popular with them. Green tea is pan-fried at a high temperature and has a distinct astringency and bitterness, so small children tend to like it less than other teas.

Cold brew and iced tea also go over well with children, whatever the type of tea.

Each product page has a "How to Brew & Storage for this tea" link below the purchase button, with instructions for that tea. Besides the basics (water temperature, amount of leaves, and amount of water), it covers several methods depending on the tea, such as an easy method for beginners, gongfu style, brewing in a glass, and cold brew.

We use a different label color for each type of tea, so you can tell your teas apart at a glance.

• Green tea
• Yellow tea
• White tea
• Oolong tea
• Black tea
• Dark tea (Pu-erh and others)
• Jasmine tea
• Flower tea

Colors on your screen may look slightly different from the printed labels.

The teaware we sell can generally be used after a light rinse with hot water.

In China, it is common to boil a new teapot with tea leaves or ginger. This covers a strong clay smell with the aroma of tea, or reduces astringency. We do not carry teaware with a strong smell. If the tea feels rough on your tongue, you can leave tea leaves and hot water in the teapot after you finish drinking, for about the first week. If you do, always change the water or remove the leaves the next day so that mold does not grow.

Many people worry that the aroma of one tea will carry over to the next. However, the organic compounds that make up the aroma oxidize and evaporate, so they do not stay in the teaware. If you rinse the teapot with boiling water after brewing and again before the next brew, there is no problem. You can use one teapot for every tea.

If you want to separate them, group your teas by quality or by broad region of origin. Each teapot will then season in its own direction. For details, please see How Water, Kettles and Teaware Change the Taste of Tea.

Always use the same water. Minerals in water build up on the surface of the teaware (this is scale). If you switch to different water, the built-up minerals are released and the balance of the taste falls apart. Even if you go back to the original water, it takes several months for the tea to taste as it should again.

Use the same water for rinsing and for warming the teaware too, and the same goes for kettles and tetsubin (iron kettles). Do not dechlorinate the water or clean off the scale, because that spoils water that has come to taste good.

As a rule, we recommend not combining reduction-fired teaware with oxidation-fired teaware. The water tastes flat, probably because the different types of iron ions affect each other. Using a poorly matched combination for a long time also affects how the teaware itself performs.

If you use a tetsubin, we recommend teaware by Taiwan Sanxi, which pairs well with every type of teaware. We know how the teaware we carry works together, so please email us with any questions.

Used teaware carries a lot of minerals from the water its previous owner used, so it will not give you the taste it should for several months. Teaware that someone else has used for years has no advantage. It actually takes longer to reset. We recommend running hot water through it regularly, even when you are not drinking tea.