Saving one of Japan's oldest green tea towns

[Music] we are in a small town called wazika which is in the mountains in kyoto they actually call this town chagenkyo which means tea utopia i'm going to be honest i've never really been very big into tea like i would drink it if someone gave it to me but like to me green tea has always been this bitter thing and even though i know it's supposed to be healthy it's bitter yeah turns out calling that green tea is like calling a red delicious apple all apples that is not all green teas even though that's like the only green tea we know in america and it's the only green tea that like most of japan knows and yet this whole time here in japan this has been here for 800 years right now the tea industry is kind of suffering in japan partly because of coronavirus but also because a lot of the tea farmers are really old in age and they don't have successors to take over management of their tea farms yeah and so thanks to special support from the kyoto government dimacha a tea company has asked us to come here and share this kind of tea with the world each of the teas have a chart of their characteristics i don't know what this chart is called but you see this everywhere in japan umami is not something i'm familiar with when it comes to tea every green tea that i've ever had has been bitter cheers obviously i'm not like a tea expert so this one tastes to me kind of like what i'm used to with green tea here but he said this is like the most standard type of green tea yeah so the second one is okumidori yep and i guess the characteristics are pretty even they're very well balanced to you i think i've never had anything oh wait what is this flavor it's very like not sweet sweet but very different so these are the flavor of the that's amazing fine tia supposed to taste so i guess this is supposed to have umami that's about equal with bitterness this one has more umami tastes like something that you would have to mix a whole bunch of different like ingredients in to get the like depth of flavor you know like scientists sitting in a factory and like all right let's pour like more of this into it to like it but it's just a single plant yeah this aftertaste is very good i like it i really like the second one but i have really high hopes for the third one which has the highest zoom on me well this one yeah my place mat says that the middle one is nikki number one the most popular one okay so it's supposed to be sweetness like milk strong umami and less bitterness it is not very bitter um like you could still tell it has the tea undertones to it but it was very smooth it was a very smithy very smooth and the umami was incredible i've never tasted any tea like this ever yeah me neither so then the last one goku oh it tastes like pure umami yeah like as a tea yeah it's so like has so much more mommy these last two i feel a little like condorcet i feel a little like touched like moved the scientific name of the tea is a chameleous nancy the from same fresh leaves we can make black tea oolong white and green tea and that's all depending on the way of the processing even in the green tea category there are lots of different kinds like sencha kabusecha gyokuro matcha hojicha also all about that way of the processing especially good tea for gyokura and matcha it contains lots of amino acid inside but if they get the strong sunshine the amino acid becomes a bitterness so by shedding it they can detain the amino acid it's create the mommy taste it's like a bit savory in the sweet so by shutting the sun leaves try to get more sunshine and then increase the chlorophyll the color of the leaves also becoming more darker and shiny greener the easiest way to define the authentic matcha the color is really light and shiny green so i think now we're going to go check out some actual tea fields yup let's go in wasaka we have more than 800 years of production history this climate and landscape is very suitable for tea production it creates a lots of fog in the spring form the helps to create more amino acids for the tea trees it's create more a sweeter umami taste of tea this is so pretty yeah wow look at the trees [Music] so these emma are people who adopted a tea tree through dimacha and when the tea tree is grown they get shipped the tea from it and that's pretty amazing these are also tea trees but an abundant one if you don't manage it's growing a lot so the reason why it's abundant we japanese facing aging society but only the cities like tokyo the younger generations are growing that meaning is countryside like wazuka facing more aging society so even in wazooka which is the center of the production of ugt the average age of tea farmer is more than 65 years old actually almost all our tea fields we succeeded from the elder farmers who is more than eight years old so our passion is we want to succeed this really nice history and production techniques and also the culture to future generations [Music] how tall will these unmanaged tea trees get eventually it could like five meters like even this one only three years passed after the guy stopped the production so it can glow more five meters like the second floor of the ceiling yeah it's two stories tall [Music] so soft around three years ago when we started tea production the um particle t field was only our t field but every year um lots of other people think it would be better to let us manage the t field so yeah yeah the production was expanded so now almost all here is our t field and then future if we want to revive this one but the reviving tv has a lot of time so we'll do wow what are all of these fans for so this one is to prevent the frost so actually now it's just moved by wind but they have a sensor in spring this region is very cool so once it's become spring the young shoot is coming which is a fast brush they are very weak for the frost if they get the frost everything is gone so after timing the sensor is moving and then they circulate the air so they pushing warm air into the bottom and sucker it dip to prevent the first i pick the leaves from here the cocoa and this is okumidori you see the difference cocoa looks big matt and then okumidori looks more waxy the actually i know originally from kyoto region so very suitable for weather like this as you feel it's cold but okumidori actually originally from shizuoka so like once it gets very cold i know the leaves have some effect like this we don't use any pesticide and chemical stuff so sometimes they effect like this but this region is very cold so we have really small number of the insect so it's very suitable for organic farming okay so where are we now now we are in uh juvenile region the nozzle part of wazuka and this building was a in the past factory to make clothes now we are we renovate this building for the workshop and this is uh wow it's so dusty now we are making a big pelas to enjoy this view this is gorgeous wow wow oh and there's a stream right there i don't think we said this before but your store slash restaurant also used to be an old supermarket um the building was also a supermarket and which crossed for more than eight years and then we at first we moved there and then so many like stuff like big fridge or you know the shelves and we cream for using several times and then innovated by ourselves oh it looks so new and like beautifully done it's got the really old traditional doors and everything oh my gosh look at that really big machine to cut the big clothes wow so not this time but in future we also clean up and then make some rooms if there's so many participants dude i'm so happy this is just the coolest thing ever yeah he's basically flipping this town yeah you get yeah right he's flipping wazaka so your family wasn't even farmers yeah actually um i was just like born in the city like kind of suitable at the center of tokyo so i really want to succeed this really good culture and good techniques for the future generations before the pandemic we accepted a lot of interns and then they stayed with us and they really want to know about how the team made and how to use the tea so actually several of them started their business in their countries so the program we plan to is we accept more people who are really interested in tea and then they can stay this building and then we will make the small kitchen and big table and do several workshops to how to use a tea and how to cook and of course we can enjoy this view and then relax and chat so and also make kind of a network in the world so that's uh making a criteria quality and also making lots of our kind of network like a kind of family to tell the true story for the for the work that i really want to do so you've renovated part of the town of wazuka you've like rejuvenated older tea fields that were abandoned and you're also training people to like go around the world and like understand how to make amazing japanese tea like i just i think that's so amazing yeah he's a hero i'm i'm so blown away so like now when we saw your like certificate from the government of kyoto at the very beginning where it was like thank you for what you've done like now we really understand exactly how much it's all for someone who's not even from here i'm really really yeah he used to be city boy really really untouched yeah i know quite often prayed in shinjuku [Laughter] when i was young [Music] june june south america wait wait american soft it says soft american cookie it's it's my type of cookie we found yeah you have we have to get these i'm gonna buy so much before we leave look at this we're going to make this apparently oh my gosh oh my gosh [Laughter] from now we will do how to make matcha confectionary sweets here's the leader of the the farming and also he is almost all our food and also the confectionary made by him [Music] america [Music] suddenly we switched because because why learn how to make cookies for me june this is a cooking course so like we want to share how to make matcha sweets and eat and other food and once you join this educational stuff we will share all the recipes and how to make it oh the smell okay now it's here my time to shine eating cookies yeah just eat i can do that do you want to see the inside so you have like multiple different types of programs for people right yeah a one-day tour like a tea peaking and a factory visit and also like a four days a educational program people can stay with us and we tell more like practical stuff how to use matcha or how to produce matcha and also the intern once you join the internship you can stay sometimes more than two months or three months and then we do a lot of things and you even have an intern who became an employee and now like works with you as like a tea farmer yes actually um one of our a staff a leihan yeah she joined us intern hi welcome to time can people who don't speak japanese apply to like be an intern most cases um people could not speak a japanese totally fine but english is necessary but not need to but if you can if you speak japanese you can also communicate more with some local people but not necessary okay we have definitely had people ask us before like they said they were interested in working in agriculture in japan or becoming farmers and i had no idea what to tell them but you can actually become a tea farmer here in washington if that's something you're interested we're buying a whole bunch of stuff to take home and like give to our friends yep thank you guys so much for watching i'm really really happy that we came here i didn't even know this type of tea existed thank you so much no thank you so much for bringing us here i'm really condor and guys if you're interested you can buy their tea online as well yes we'll put their link in the description box as well and thank you guys for watching thank you so much bye

Channel: Rachel & Jun's Adventures!

Views: 227,972

Keywords: japan, japanese, rachel, jun, rachel and jun, rachel & jun, vlog, blog, daily, life

Id: F5A21lrIEBI

Length: 16min 19sec (979 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 20 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Shiverow]

God, I love Rachel and Jun lol. They're so wholesome

[u/sincerelymars]

I remember the first time I tried gyokuro and thinking the same—what the heck?? why is all the green tea served everywhere nothing like this??

Ever since life has been much more delicious

[u/GavonyTownship]

I've met this man before! During my time at the obubu tea internship, me and some interns visited d.matcha. I also met him during the Chagenkyo Matsuri, which is a huge tea festival near/in Wazuka. Incredibly kind man.

Wazuka is such a hidden gem man. So beautiful and old right along that river with the rolling hills and the mourning mist. I miss it a lot.

[u/PalladynSlonca1]

Thank you so much for sharing this! Looks like I found something to add to my bucket list!!

[u/Spubli]

Thank you for sharing!

[u/team_nanatsujiya]

I volunteered for a tea farm near d:matcha, Obubu. They're also making efforts to revitalize? Japanese teas, especially to people outside Japan. Wazuka is absolutely gorgeous and it was a great experience.