When do British people drink tea? Do young people drink tea?

In Japan, when gardener or handyman come to the house for work in the house, we normally offer them tea at 10:00 a.m., after lunch, and at 3:00 p.m. accompanied with snack. In our own daily life, we typically drank tea after breakfast, after lunch, and after work, sometimes after dinner, even before going to bed. Compared to the former days, people today are drinking less tea. However tea is still playing an important role of daily life in Japan. In England, they have the names for tea time such as early-morning tea, eleven-just tea, tea with lunch, afternoon tea, five-o'clock tea, evening tea, and night cap. They also traditionally drank tea as often as Japanese did. In former days, many large companies in London hired people to serve tea, and they were called "tea lady". Today in London, not only tea lady does not exist, many people don't even have time to stop their work to grab a cup of tea. However, if you go to the suburbs in England, you still see local people stop their work for a moment and take their tea time. They may use tea bags to make tea, but it doesn't matter. I still think it is wonderful custom to make time to drink tea. Recently, various kind of bottled or canned beverage are getting popular in Japan. They are indeed convenient, but in the same time, we are loosing beautiful part of our culture. In London, it is a trend to drink bottled mineral waters especially among the young people. I see less tea shops in London now, but numbers of café has increased tremendously. Situation is very similar in Japan. I feel sad because they seem to be forgetting about the special time tea had provided into our life.

(Yoshie Matsumiya)