Besides having a higher chance of finding an upright tea stalk, it also brews up the most beau-tea-ful and tas-tea cup of leaf water ever.

Many people are probably familiar with the belief that it’s an omen of good fortune when a tea stalk floats vertically in your cup. As something that doesn’t happen very often, it certainly calls for a celebration if you ever happen to spot one.

However, what if there was a tea where the probability of the stalk floating upright was higher? Enter Fortune Tea Chabashira, which holds some kind of secret science to make just that very thing happen.

The name chabashira is the Japanese term for “tea stalk,” which gets right to the stem of the topic at hand. A pack of two recently cost us 950 yen (US$6.28) through a special promotion through Japanese messaging app Line.

5 Coin manufactures the green tea made from high-grade tea leaves grown in Makinohara, Shizuoka Prefecture. Each tea pack also contains a small packet of edible gold leaf for an extra luxurious touch.

▼ The expiration date for this particular pack is November 11, 2025.

Upon opening a pack, we were delighted to find an explanatory leaflet, with one side in Japanese…

…and the other in English! This tea would make a fun souvenir from a trip to Japan.

Also inside was the little packet containing bits of edible gold leaf. It seemed to sparkle even more in anticipation of being used.

It was time to brew the tea. We poured hot water over the sachet and let the contents infuse while watching the water take on a distinctive green hue.

When it had been long enough, we prepared to gently remove the sachet from the water. That’s when we noticed something nestled against the side of the cup.

It was the biggest tea stalk that we had ever seen! And most impressively, it was standing straight up!!

We could hardly believe it. It’s usually so rare to see this kind of sight that we didn’t even care if it were technically cheating or whatnot.

While still marveling at the stalk, we perfected the brewed tea with a sprinkling of gold leaf. It was the most brew-tiful cup of tea we had ever laid eyes on, and it must be positively bursting with good fortune.

A fun visual guide on the back of the pack also explained that the positioning of the tea stalk further determines the degree of good fortune. Our particular stalk was floating near the side of the cup, so we were blessed with “fair luck” (chukichi). The fact that the tea stalk was standing upright at all was already a good omen in and of itself, so we were more than content with this interpretation.

As for the taste, the tea had the rich bitterness paired with an edge of sweetness that’s characteristic of a high-quality green tea. Drinking it seemed to warm our bodies to the core. This was definitely a tea to be sipped and enjoyed over a stretch of time and not downed in two gulps.

By the way, one sachet can yield three to four cups of tea. After the second cup, the astringency of the flavor tones down as well.

Fortune Tea Chabashira can be purchased from 5 Coin’s online store here. Consider gifting a few packs to someone who could really use the good luck–along with buying them one of Japan’s luckiest matcha crepes.

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