Fumie Okumura

FOUNDER, TOKA TEA

KYOTO, JAPAN

Fumie Okumura was born in Kyoto Prefecture and raised in Tokyo. After graduating from Waseda University,  Fumie worked for Tokyo Design Center. She developed her unique perspective of food and design and started working independently as one of Japan’s first creative directors in the field of food business. In 2008 she founded her own company, Foodelco Inc. Through her projects she aims to transfer the wisdom of traditional Japanese food culture into our modern times and create new sustainable food practices.

In 2015, Fumie opened TOKA - a tearoom, teashop and gallery for tea utensils in a renovated old Japanese townhouse, located in the neighborhood of the Imperial Palace in Kyoto. Working closely with small organic Japanese tea farmers, TOKA was the first shop in Japan to offer exclusively organically grown  “single origin, single field” Japanese teas. In the last years, TOKA has become a hot spot attracting tea lovers and tea aficionados from all over the world.

For Fumie TOKA is a laboratory for Japanese tea culture, where she fosters new perspectives and tastes, promotes sustainable practices, and tries to inspire a shift in our attitudes towards the essentials of food and life.