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Tapioca tea is the biggest thing in Tokyo right now, so we try Tokyo’s biggest tapioca tea【Pics】

Casey Baseel Sep 30, 2019
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Mr. Sato follows the lead of trendy teens with a little tapiru time with a giant boba drink.

It took a while for the tapioca milk tea craze to make it’s way to Japan, but it’s here now, as evidenced by Tokyo’s tapioca dessert ramen restaurant and Tapioca Land entertainment center. Tapioca has gotten so popular that high school girls have even created a new word, tapiru, which means to go out to drink tapioca milk tea, often while snapping selfies, of course.

Being the sort of hip, always-up-on-the-latest-trends kind of guy he is, SoraNews24’s crack reporter Mr. Sato occasionally makes room in his busy schedule for some sweet tapiru time, and his latest craving sent him to the Harajuku branch of tapioca tea stand Mot Tram.

Feeling especially thirsty, he was happy to see that he could upsize his tapioca tea to a large, but then his gaze traveled off the regular menu…

…and on to a sign for the brand-new Mega Mot Tram tea, which is exclusive to the Harajuku branch.

As you might expect of someone with a virtually unfillable stomach, Mr. Sato was intrigued. After taking a brief moment to decide what exact flavor he wanted, he ordered the house specialty Mot Tram Milk Tea, passing on the Uji matcha, Okinawa brown sugar, and Cafe au Lait versions.

So just how big is the Mega tapioca tea?

▼ This big

The colossal drink, which costs 990 yen (US$9.15) comes in a 26-centimeter (10.2-inch) cup, and contains a full liter (33.8 ounces) of tea and tapioca. There’s actually so much tapioca that while the upper part of the cup is a creamy beverage…

…the bottom is an inky netherworld of boba chaos.

At one liter, the Mot Tram Mega Tapioca Tea would weigh an even kilogram (2.2 pounds) if it was entirely liquid. Mr. Sato wasn’t sure if the tapioca balls sharing space with the tea in side his cup made the whole thing heavier or lighter, but he was startled by how much weight there is to the thing, and had to be careful walking around with it.

Wanting to lighten the load, he took a sip, and the intense sweetness felt like it had shot from the tip of his tongue and straight into his brain.

In retrospect, he should have stirred the drink first, since all that tapioca means a super-concentrated flavor at the bottom of the cup. A few swift swirls later, he could actually make out individual boba pearls, and the second sip delivered a perfectly balanced flavor.

With his tapiru session now underway, the next order of business was, of course, to pose for a few more selfies on Takeshita Street, the center of Tokyo teen fashion from which the latest looks radiate out to the rest of the country.

Shockingly, Mr. Sato told us he was actually full by the time he finished his drink, something we’ve rarely heard him say. That probably means that Mot Tram’s Mega Tapioca Tea is going to be hard for most normal people to finish, so you might want to consider using whatever you don’t drink to follow our recipe for tapioca tea rice cooker rice.

shop information
Mot Tram (Harajuku branch) / モッチャム（原宿店）
Address: Tokyo-to, Shibuya-ku, Jingumae 3-25-18, The Share 1st floor
東京都渋谷区神宮前3-25-18 The Share 1F
Open 11 a.m.-7 p.m.
Website

Photos ©SoraNews24
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[ Read in Japanese ]