The Best Spots for Boba in Tokyo

Although not the first bubble tea shop to launch in Japan, Gong Cha, which opened its first store in the Harajuku-Omotesando area in 2015 was certainly the one that really got the boba trend rolling. You’ll find staples like black milk tea and oolong milk tea, along with Alishan milk tea, which uses green oolong tea grown on Taiwan’s Mount Ali. Gong Cha also allows you to customize your boba tea down to the level of sweetness and amount of ice used.

Chun Shui Tang, a Taiwanese restaurant and café serving food and bubble tea, opened its first location in Japan in Daikanyama in 2013. Menu items include noodle dishes, dim sum, and Taiwanese desserts. While certainly authentic in flavor, Chun Shui Tang’s bubble tea runs a bit on the expensive side compared to other boba chains in Tokyo, as their takeout drinks only come in one size, which is smaller than both their dine-in drinks and the drink sizes offered at other pearl tea shops.

Saisabo, which opened in the Harajuku Cascade building in October 2015, is another restaurant and café specializing in Taiwanese food, desserts, and of course pearl milk tea. As fitting for its Harajuku setting, Saisabo serves up some next-level dreamlike concoctions with their bubble tea drinks, such as their boba milk tea with a cotton candy and marshmallow ‘lid’.

One of the biggest Taiwanese bubble tea chains in the world with over 2,500 stores, CoCo Fresh Tea & Juice opened its first Japan location in the heart of Shibuya Center Gai in February 2017. CoCo offers better cost performance than the competition by operating takeout-only bubble tea stands with no seating. This allows them to sell larger drink sizes at more competitive pricing than other bubble tea shops in Tokyo. And while their milk tea may not be as refined as some of the other more upscale brands, CoCo still manages to deliver a fresh, satisfying, and authentic cup of bubble milk tea with every drink.

One of the more recent editions to the pearl tea scene, The Alley Lujiaoxiang opened its first store in Omotesando in August 2017. Specializing in high-quality Assam milk tea, The Alley allows you to customize size, sweetness, and even the exact temperature of your drink: iced, mild (hot but cool enough to drink right away), and hot (scalding hot for takeaway drinks). While their Omotesando flagship store offers café seating, most of their other locations are takeout or standing room only.

While it may not fit your usual image of a Taiwanese bubble tea shop, Alfred Tea Room combines pearl milk tea with a decadent tea parlor. Originally from Los Angeles, the brand inhabits the space between high-end tea rooms and casual boba shops. It’s famous among the Hollywood crowd and already highly popular in Tokyo since launching its flagship store in the trendy Aoyama district in October 2017.

The only Taiwanese boba brand publicly listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange, Chatime is something of a bubble tea powerhouse, with over a thousand franchise shops in 30 different countries. The company is known for modernizing the traditional Taiwanese milk tea industry by offering a wider variety of drink options, such as fresh juices, non-milk teas, and other toppings in addition to boba pearls. The company launched its first Japan location in the upscale Ginza district in November 2017.