Hello, friends, Ohio. Welcome to the Wabi-Sabi podcast. We are only five episodes away from 200 episodes

when we launched in 2018. I never thought that I would continue this project with you

throughout the duration of my career. But here we are and we've got a lot going on,

especially in the world of Macha. Every day I get emailed by different professionals,

journalists, students studying journalism, Japanese colleagues, you know, still working with the

consulate of New York for Japan and the Japanese government. I'm going to be very candid in

today's conversation about matcha because so many people have tried to claim and make it their own. And matcha is not mine.

Mata belongs to the tea farmers and the monks and the tea purveyors in Japan. I'm virtually just

the bridge that connects the east and the west because that's how I grew up and that's my bloodline.

I also think we should be

much more aware of who we're getting our information from. A lot of people that interview me

know nothing about Mata and I'm basically teaching them everything I know for an hour and then they

regurgitate everything I told them.

When in actuality, I think individuals like myself or my mentor, Rona Tissan, who's also half

Japanese, half American, I feel like we should be writing these pieces. The reason why I chose

to do another pod on matcha was because it's such an important

part of my life and I know it's an important part of yours. It's also got a bigger meaning to it.

Macha is a Japanese treasure. It's an ingredient that is prized by the hierarchy, the samurai, the aristocrats in

Japan. It's not necessarily drunk the way we drink it in the Western world, which is

obliterated. So I got the receipts to back up everything.

Not that I need that, but I think it's fair to say I was one of the very few people that really introduced Mata to the Western world.

And I feel a deep responsibility to go back, hit rewind, and be like, hey, hold up,

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