About Matcha Wire

Matcha Wire is a daily English-language briefing on Japan's tea industry. Every morning it monitors 40 Japanese newspapers, government ministries, prefectural tea associations, trade bodies, and peer-reviewed research — sources that almost never appear in English — and turns the day's most relevant developments into a fast, readable wire on matcha, sencha, exports, prices, cultivation, and policy.

How we report

For each story we publish our own original editorial layer: an English summary written in our words, key points, short attributed quotations, topic and location tags, and a link to the original source. We do not republish other outlets' full articles or their translations — where you want the complete piece, we point you to the source, and one click opens the publisher's own page machine-translated in your browser. Every number, date and quotation in a summary is checked back against the original Japanese article automatically, and anything the source does not support is dropped before publication. Our paid sources (AgriNews, Kyoto Shimbun, Asahi) are fetched in full so nothing important is missed.

Who publishes it

Matcha Wire is published by Ooika, a Japanese-tea company founded by Marc Falzon. Ooika works directly with growers in Japan and follows the tea trade closely — Matcha Wire grew out of the daily reading that work already required. That means the briefing is written by people who source, taste, and sell Japanese tea, not a generic news aggregator.

Who it's for

Importers, cafés, brands, researchers, and serious enthusiasts who need to know what's happening in Japanese tea — from a matcha shortage or an export figure to a new cultivar or a shift in policy — without reading Japanese or waiting for it to surface elsewhere. A free tier gives you a sample every day; a subscription opens every story.

Contact

Questions, corrections, or story tips? Email hello@ooika.co.

Read our Terms & Privacy Policy. Matcha Wire is an Ooika publication.