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Clever design lets you easily prepare a cup of tea just before you drink it.

Any convenience store in Japan is well-stocked with bottles of green tea, and some brands are extremely tasty. Still, there’s no escaping the fact that these bottled options don’t represent a freshly made cup of tea, as their contents were mixed days ago at a bottling plant before being shipped to the store where they wait for thirsty customers.

But as of March 29, shoppers at Natural Lawson, the ever-so-slightly more refined sub-brand of convenience store chain Lawson, can have the best of both worlds with Haruka, a unique bottled tea product that lets you easily prepare a cup only moments before drinking.

At first glance, Haruka looks more like a spray bottle than a beverage, what with its unusually shaped cap and its glass covering.

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What’s more, the liquid inside is entirely clear. This isn’t the Crystal Pepsi of teas, though, but actually water that flows from Mt. Ibukiyama in Kyushu.

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But before you think that Haruka is out to dupe customers into paying bottled tea prices for bottled water, take a closer look at the cap. It has two sections, and hidden away inside the top portion is powdered green tea.

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Twist the top part of the cap, and the tea drops into the water.

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Once it does, give the bottle a few good shakes (Haruka’s makers recommend 10)…

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…and remove the cap by twisting its bottom section.

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Not only will you have a freshly made batch of tea, it’ll also have the sort of enticing froth that sits atop the whisked matcha used in tea ceremonies.

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Getting back to the glass cover mentioned earlier, it’s not there just to make the package look classy. It’s actually a compact drinking glass that you can pour the tea into, so that you can better appreciate its deep color as you leisurely sip it.

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Haruka is available in two varieties: matcha, with its deep, bitter notes, and the slightly smoother, sweeter gyokuro, made with delicate tea leaves grown in the shade. Both are priced at 500 yen (US$4.50), which is more than what you’d usually pay for convenience store tea, but when you take into account the freshness (and drinking glass) you’re getting, that seems like a fair price for an elegant beverage.

Source: Japaaan
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