I'm currently in Japan on vacation and I'd like to buy good quality Karigane/Kukicha (a special variant of green tea).
This will resolve Yes if I end up buying high quality Karigane/Kukicha while in Japan.
This is a family vacation, I won't be able to disappear for 3 hours to get my tea
I love green tea and already spent close to $200 on Sencha and Kabusecha
I've already been to Uji and bought tea there. The three lovely 90 year olds running the shop took so long with their old mechanical scale they probably inherited from their grandparents, and I had to catch a train, so I ran out of time before I could ask if they had Karigane.
I was able to take half an hour for myself in Kyoto and visited a little Marukyu Koyamaen store (they sell award-winning matcha, as well as many other varieties of green tea, I had bought from them before back home via an official reseller). Karigane was out of stock, unfortunatelly.
I'll be in Kyoto until afternoon of the 25th, but on a tight schedule at Fushimi Inari and Nishiki market.
The fancy touristy stores which I can easily find on google (or just by walking basically anywhere, at least in Kyoto) sell everything matcha. Maybe one in 20 or 50 also sell Karigane/Kukicha, but I can't check them all.
I haven't checked if Don Quijote sells Karigane/Kukicha, but I wouldn't consider this good quality.
I'd prefer to buy from a dedicated tea seller, preferably freshly packaged loose tea, but if there's some sort of supermarket which offers hight quality tea, that's fine as well. I won't know the quality from seeing just the packaging though, so I'd need some references (reddit, tea-talk forum, ...)
Time in Kyoto is precious and running out, so chances will be better in:
Osaka, 3 nights, staying near Sakuragawa Station
Kanazawa, 3 nights, staying near the Omicho market (Kaga Bocha, which seems to be a roasted variant of Karigane/Kukicha, won't count)
Car trip from Kanazawa to Togakushi and 2 days later from Togakushi to Tokyo
Tokyo, 4 nights, staying close to Asakusa Station
1,000