Originally Posted by
MSPeconomist
Most Japanese hotel rooms have coffee and tea making facilities, so if you prefer a light breakfast, you just need to purchase some pastry. In the tourist areas of Tokyo, it's easy to find French bakeries; sometimes they're right in the hotel or you can look for something in the the basement food hall of a big department store.
The problem with this approach is that the bakeries don't open until late.
I make this work by buying discount pastries the night before (preferably at a discount) and ensuring that I have a strong sturdy paper bag.
Next morning I pop the pastries into the paper bag and blast them with the hottest setting of a hair dryer for a minute or two to revive them. Result: "fresh" pastries that taste like they've come from the oven.
To make a decent cup of green tea in your hotel room:
You can get a small tea pot and internal mesh strainer from a 100 yen shop and good leaf tea from a whole host of sources. Ask about the optimum water temperature and brewing time for your particular tea (use paper and show "80C ?" to find out, then tap your watch and see if they follow that)
If your hotel is 4 star or under check the quality of the water from the water heater. Generally you will need to empty it and refill it with bottled water as Tokyo tap water, whilst safe, can taste unpleasant. It's a good habit anyway as water heater water may have been sitting in there for longer than you'd care to imagine.
See if your water heater will provide water at 80 degrees Celcius, this temperature and a one minute steep time is a good place to start.
Lots of online resources are available that will help you get the best out of Japanese tea so need for me to delve further into this (thankfully, my tea making skills are way, way better than my dreadful Japanese language skills)