“The Japanese custom of drinking green tea came from China in about 800AD. The use of tea started when Buddhist monks, who had gone to China for study, returned to Japan bringing tea with a medicinal beverage. In the Kamakura era (1191-1333), the monk Eisai stressed the beneficial effects of tea in a manuscript entitled Maintaining Health by Drinking Tea (1211): “Tea is a miraculous medicine for the maintenance of health. Tea has an extraordinary power to prolong life. Anywhere a person cultivates tea, long life will follow. In ancient and modern times, tea is the elixir that creates the mountain-dweller immortal.”