My Journey — From Belgium to the Tea Fields of Yame

For as long as I can remember, Japan has always fascinated me. As a child, it was manga and animated films. As a teenager, it became the language, the culture, the philosophy. And then, in September 2024, I finally boarded a plane.

This first trip to Japan changed everything. In Kyoto, I participated in my first tea ceremony in a small traditional tea room. The silence, the precise gesture of the tea master, the perfect foam of the matcha in the bowl — I understood that it wasn't just a drink. It was a ritual, a way to slow down.

Back in Belgium, I tried every matcha I could find. Supermarkets, organic stores, specialized websites. The disappointment was systematic: bitter taste, dull color, no information about the origin. Nothing resembled what I had tasted in Japan.

So I decided to go find it myself. I started learning Japanese, I studied marketing, I read everything I could find about tea culture. In 2026, I left Belgium to settle in Kyoto.

For months, I visited farms in Uji, Shizuoka, and Kagoshima. Then I arrived in Yame, in Fukuoka Prefecture. There, I discovered the Oishi farm — four generations of producers, intact traditional methods, and a matcha of a quality I had found nowhere else.

Maison Yume was born from this encounter. Yume means "dream" in Japanese. That's exactly what this adventure represents: a childhood dream come true, an obsession turned into a mission — to bring the best of Japanese tea to Europe, without compromise.