Tea Farm Visit Program in Shizuoka
Getting off Shinkansen bullet train at Shizuoka Station, I rode a JR train to Okitsu Station. It’s not so bad for me to take a local train as I can find lots of local treasures through the window.
At Okitsu Station, my guide was waiting. He led me in the taxi and we moved.
The destination was a bit deep in the mountains in a small village. The guide told me there were lots of abundant houses around. A few minute walk took us to the house. Kyoko-san welcomed us with her special green tea.
While enjoying her tea, she told me a lot about green tea, like, when it was harvested, how it was processed, and what difficulties she had for the tea business. According to her story, tea business is no more as good as it used to be, rather getting worse year by year and tea farmers are trying to find a way to sustain their tea business. Matcha making seems to be becoming a solution but she said she would rather stick to Sencha.
Her tea farm was not so big as I had expected but taking terrain conditions into consideration, as the village was between mountains, no wonder. On the contrary, mountains behind the tea farms looked very picturesque. She kindly told me how to pick up tea leaves. The guide translated, “2 leaves and 1 baby”. Nowadays, most of tea farmers use harvesting machines, people used to pick tea leaves by hands. Currently, people pick up tea leaves to produce high-grade tea.
After the tea plantation walk, I enjoyed Matcha in her tea room. You might be surprised but she was the teacher of hand-rolling, Matcha, and Sencha. She said if you have time enough, you could experience hand-rolling from the beginning, which would take 6-7 hours in total. Maybe next time, I’d love to try.
The whole experience was perfect, I was well educated about green tea, and what was more, chatting with her was wonderful. Next time, I think I learn some Japanese.
