Tea

Monks first introduced tea to Japan in the sixth century, but it wasn’t until the eighth century that cultivation began and tea became an important part of Japanese life.

The first European port city to experience tea was Amsterdam, during the first few years of the seventeenth century. At first tea was treated as nothing more than a novelty—though a very expensive one. Tea didn’t make it to London for another half-century, but once the Brits found a taste for tea, they were never the same again.