Tea Regions of Japan - Shizuoka (Part 6) | Kawanehoncho Featuring Tsuchiya Nouen

You can find tea across the whole Shizuoka prefecture, including the mountainous areas. Kawane Honcho is a small tea growing town in the mountains of Shizuoka. Some of its tea fields are as high as 600 meters above the sea level. This provides some really stunning views. I don't think you can find anything like this anywhere else in Shizuoka. You don't hear the sound of a car, do you? All you hear is the sound of birds and insects, and the sound of nature. If you come here from outside, you'll understand what's so special about this place. The weather has been great for a few days now, and it's been raining a lot. But the next day, all the scenery was so beautiful. It was like a cloud of fog. I think that's the best part about this place. While Kawane Honcho is a small mountain town, its tea has been well-known for centuries. In 1893, Kawane Honcho tea even received an award at the Chicago World's Fair. Numerous awards in Japan also attest to its high quality. Tsuchiya Tea Farm has also won the Minister of Agriculture award several times. It is no wonder that mountain conditions are great for producing high-quality tea. A large difference between day and night temperatures, as well as humid weather, allow the formation of tender leaves full of delicious nutrients. However, because of the cooler mountain weather, tea harvest here begins later than in other areas. If you look at it from the center of the town, it takes about a week to ten days for the tea to be harvested. Kawane is a large area. It's about 600 meters above sea level, but the tea farms near Fumoto and Oigawa have already run out of tea. Cold weather, especially in winter, can be too harsh for tea plants. From the old times, there has been a technique to cover the soil with dry, pampas grasses. And of course, when dry grasses decay, they become a good fertilizer. But preparing them takes some effort. There is a place on top of the mountain over there. Originally, all the grass around here was harvested, but all the grass was eaten by the deer. So the deer eat it all. In the end, the number of tea plants is decreasing, and the number of grass fields is decreasing. So in order to increase the number of grass fields, we have to borrow other people's land. That's why it's quite difficult. We have to load a lot of tea in a truck and carry it back and forth. Tsuchiya family has been making tea for three generations. Their family started as a branch from the main family line. My parents have a house at the top of the mountain. They split the land. In the early days of the Showa era, the people here were teachers at school. So they were allowed to leave the school. This was an open shop. So the old man of the main family forced my father to live here. That was in the early days of the Showa era. But at that time, there were only a few tea gardens and factories. Their deer factory was built in 1956, and they still use some of the same small machines today. We use a 35-kilogram machine to make tea. The finished tea weighs about 5 kilograms. So we can meet the needs of our customers. Even today, the tea farm is not very large. About 1.8 hectares. There are mostly former tea farmers here right now, regardless of where they come from. Since I'm working at a private farm, I've done it in a small shop. Tsuchiya-san has been making tea for more than 60 years. I was born in 1983, so I started my career at the age of 20. 1963? Yes. Tsuchiya-san's daughter Yuka-san, though, didn't choose tea production at the beginning. She started her career in TV production. I used to work in a different field. What did you do? I used to work in media production. There was a limit to what I could do in that industry. I thought it was okay even if it wasn't for me. When I came to help out with a project like this, my father would say things like, it won't sell, it's cheap, and things like that. My father had just started ice production. He told me that if I could do a little more ice production, the profits would go up, so I thought I'd do it. I thought I'd start doing housework when I got my license as a Japanese tea instructor. I started doing housework when I was 14, so it's been about 20 years. Now in Japan, there are more women working with tea. But when Yuka-san started, she was among the pioneers. Agriculture is a male-dominated field, so it's not that I don't recognize women, but I think it's because I don't have a place for women. But right now, it's not just about making agriculture. If you don't even sell it, you can't make a profit. Only by listening to the consumer's voice can you make good things. I think it's better for women to be able to play that role. If women are active in agriculture and tea production, there will be more people who will drink tea. There is a limit, though, how much tea one family can produce in such a mountainous area. Tsuchiya family is really focused on making delicious tea and connecting with their customers directly. We don't have a lot of tea. Even if we make a cup of tea every year, we can only make a ton of tea. That's the limit of what we can do as a family. So from that point of view, we try to appeal to our customers so that they can see the delicious things. That's how we sell. In my case, I listen to the voice of the customers in the field and make it. From here on, Tsuchiya family hopes that more young people in Japan will get interested in tea. I want to teach young people in Japan how to make delicious and fun tea.