On a recent shopping trip to Mitsuwa, a chain Japanese grocery market in California, Christy found an interesting group of products that occupied a good portion of the local Japanese retail shelf. Promising to deliver an ‘authentic’ drip cup of coffee right to your desktop was a small, thin package no larger than one and a half inches wide and six inches tall. We thought it just might be brilliant idea!

We bought a box of five packets for eight dollars to try it out (click above for the step-by-step process). The most transformative part of the whole experience occurred when we bent the filter horizontally and ‘bam!’ the ground coffee, previously hidden, was revealed. The manufacturer tastefully glued the filter seam so it stays closed during transportation and ‘pops’ open when you bend it. The rest of the process was actually very intuitive as we added hot water and watched coffee come straight through the filter. It was a very good cup of coffee that may have been a bit expensive, but the experience rocked!