Will this plan to revitalize a Japanese tea town work?

[Music] hello world what's your image of a small japanese town is it peaceful a place with beautiful nature a strong community or is it depopulation an area that's seen better days a bunch of abandoned homes and abandoned fields really it's all those things japanese towns are beautiful but their population has aged tremendously and there are not enough young people to take over it's with this backdrop that i introduce you to wazika a town with 800 years of history producing green tea how did it come to be that more than half of farmers are over the age of 65 and few of their children are taking over their farms [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] it turns out that around the world green tea is more popular than ever and there's never been more green tea produced than now despite this japanese tea production has dropped from 49 000 tons in 2004 to 41 000 tons in 2019 what's dropped even more is the tea price from a peak of 2 000 yen per kilogram in 2004 to 1200 yen per kilogram in 2019 nowadays in japan there's less leaf tea consumed per household that is to say less home-brewed green tea in contrast to this spending on tea in japan is at an all-time high that's because much more money is being spent on tea beverage products like bottled green tea why is this well young people don't brew nearly as much green tea as the older generation and as the older generation passes away the market for home brewed green tea continues to decline even though spending on tea products is up prices that farmers command have dropped 40 percent green tea leaf that you brew at home is of higher quality and accordingly more expensive bottled green tea on the other hand uses lower quality green tea and is much cheaper farmers simply can't make as much money as they could in the past given current tea drinking habits so it's probably counter-intuitive that revitalizing green tea farming in wazika would be a good idea but that's exactly what daiki-san and his co-founders which include his wife his younger brother and a family friend are trying to do with their start up [Music] know yourself [Music] the reason why we came here is a tea farming tea production history of this region has more than 800 years the soil is very good for the tea and also the landscape and the gap of the temperature at noon and the night is very huge so that's creates really nice tea historically so like we want to make this a production site like a wine a production site like burgundy because um as you see it's a mountain side and very small region so like it's not become big farming and machinery farming so like more like a labor intensive so like we want to focus on more foreign [Music] we worked for big farmers as apprentice and then finally two years past we got some fuel to produce and everyone watching how we are doing so once we are working hard for the customers working for hard for the tea field and a little bit at all we can get a trust and then now like our field is becoming to the three hectares we got a feel from the five elder farmers who now quit the tea farming if you're currently thinking that locals were super enthusiastic about new faces coming to town to help revitalize it it wasn't as simple as that i know for example like the flat field it took two years after i started to talk to to purchase [Music] is thing is very tough sometimes i got some they get angry with me they are good guys [Music] these small communities have had to rely on each other to survive everyone is connected and one person's actions will affect the rest there are community things to do like getting together once or twice a month to clean the shrine are being a volunteer firefighter since there's no local fire station so you need to trust that your neighbors got your back traditionally land was passed on from generation to generation and new people came in through marriage but their descendants have left town and aren't coming back so the population has declined from a peak of seven thousand six hundred in nineteen fifty five to three thousand five hundred now so in order to keep the town alive something has to change but it's hard to accept that your kids aren't coming back and i say kids but these are people in their 50s or 60s and even if there are abandoned homes or fields do you want to be the person that brought in an outsider and broke the harmony of the village do you want to be the person who sold off the land that's been in the family for generations well like for elders here is like they really like this region but like at the same time the changing new things and also trying to new thing is it's like a very tough for them they want to keep this history so like for me by getting their trust and then getting their support i want to you know fit my goal and their wants and the needs to set align the goal this slice party is just between our tea field and from last year the farmers here became over 80s so like he said it's difficult to continue so he stopped farming last year so we asked him to succeed this lives farming what we cannot do by ourselves so he is very kind to teach us and we learn and also do the rice farming from this year it does take a bit of time especially to build trust i think because like the villagers are very close-knit so but as long as you are earnest in your work and you show like a kind of commitment to what's not just like earning a profit from farming but as well as like helping the village develop on a larger scale i think that in that sense that kind of translates over to the older people so yeah you have to farm your heart as cliche as that sounds but i guess anywhere you go like with younger people coming in who might not be so familiar with like the certain traditions or routines of that particular place you have you yourself have to take time to kind of learn and adapt to them [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] we japanese are facing the super aging society so by a making a sustainable region including great landscape and culture to succeeding a culture we want to make one good example for the future not only in japan but also other countries this that's why we want to challenge a lot of things and that's my enjoyment yes making a good example is actually why you're seeing this video today the reason my sister-in-law and i could film several times over the year is because of funding from the japanese government which is working in collaboration with dimacha to transition tea farming into a sustainable business moving forward part of that goal is that knowledge generated here can be used to help farmers in other areas around kyoto japan and the world so what's the plan how are they going to revitalize this small town what i'm thinking is like you see the a brown building right and then we will make our new store the next to the front field and also the factory and then a get together of two buildings and then we will move here right so d matcha currently runs a cafe that's located in the center of wazika daiki is planning on moving his cafe and headquarters to this part of wazika called yubine which currently has 130 households yubane is a lot tighter and compact so it's easier to group all their buildings and many of their t-fields close together and also we are planning to make the uh the big a open bus a ticket for the onsen things and in the bushes the places and then we will make like a barbecue and open petal sprays and then also there is like a um old a abundant house there in our tea field and we will make that one vacation lentils by renovating that uh building so all the buildings we will of course put the solar so almost hundred percent energy we will create by ourselves almost all field here what organic at this point you might be thinking wait a second i thought dimacha was producing tea what's with the cafe onsen and vacation rental and they're also harvesting rice yeah but it doesn't stop there there are guided tours of the fields tea tastings a japanese green tea textbook that daiki wrote a green tea business school green tea desserts confectionaries and goods pop-up shops in kyoto and tokyo online orders internships by both japanese and international people a yuzu field and diki is even thinking about getting a hunting license to hunt wild born deer as there's currently an overpopulation of both and they damage the environment and crops now there are so many deers but ninety percent of deer was just like um killed and then throw it away so like we want to make some value for the meat so there's a lot of things in the works and you can kind of appreciate why initially some of the locals might have been like hold up take it easy daiki if i uh carry out the plants too quickly like i you know the other residents think it's it's like a too fast or like a day you know really not uncomfortable so like i need to communicate with them very carefully a little by little to carry out the plan is very important i really would like to keep some history or culture which people who lived here to succeed but like just doing nothing it's not enough so by combining with a business especially like the connecting with the world internationally and also invite a lot of young people and by doing that i want to connect with the history and culture and the new things that's one of the prawns to do that the average farmer harvest tea brings it to the factory for processing and then distributors take it from there but if you look at local trends it's easy to see how following this same path will be more and more precarious going forward i didn't quite understand why dimacha was trying to do so much until i started to read the ministry of agriculture forestry and fisheries current outlook of japanese tea report which is a mouthful and what i learned is that while green tea isn't doing well domestically exports to the world has been increasing drastically and instead of tea prices getting lower like in japan they've actually been increasing organic tea is also on the rise with 84 percent of the teu imports being organic so here's the thing wazika actually produces 40 of ugt which is the most famous tea region in japan mazuka has a deep history of producing great green tea it's also very hilly and thus producing green tea is labor intensive it's not conducive to large-scale commercial farming like can be done in kagoshima which is experimenting with robotic tea harvesters it only makes sense that if you're in a premium green tea producing area that you try and sell to the most promising premium green tea market which is overseas so part of accomplishing this is attracting young people and an international audience by making a touch point through the the sightseeing people are interested in tea or like a japanese villages most of our employees actually as a one of our customers before and then they are interested in this region and then become a member of our company we are the kind of hub between the countryside and also the international young people [Music] obviously it's not a very glamorous job or lifestyle you have to get dirty but i think there are a lot of hidden rewards [Music] [Music] [Laughter] what i found interesting was that all staff no matter their role also worked in the fields as well not only that they were very involved in creating new products and coming up with different ways to promote the region and the tea it produces [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] as i mentioned earlier this video was sponsored by the matcha and the japanese government as part of a small town revitalization project the reason i took on this project was because i was given free rein to talk about what i wanted to so up until this point what you saw was my edit my video because one of the keys to revitalization is to have a sustainable profitable business here are some things daiki wanted me to mention about dmaccha and specifically their online store first off he's provided a coupon code to get a 10 discount for an online order i've put that link in the description one thing you can order single origin tea that means the tea comes from a single field so you know exactly where the tea comes from the data was harvested the cultivar and how it was produced like pesticide free and how many days shaded another is a big selection of confectionaries something i found intriguing is that if you like making sweets or baked goods you can get matcha to make your own i personally got matcha to specifically make matcha lattes there's also a tea subscription service and an adopted tree program currently like the residents a lot of tea fields are getting up there in age and need to be replanted to be clear the tea fields get replanted after 40 50 or 60 years not the residents but yeah you can support the effort by adopting a tea tree basically what daiki wants to say is that he'd like you to come visit wazika and have fun learning about green tea drinking green tea and eating green tea and after you go you can still enjoy the experience online or vice versa you can go online first i don't think he minds and now i can thank my patreon supporters who help me make videos like this thanks for watching see you next time peace what are revitalization efforts like where you're from

Channel: Life Where I'm From

Views: 745,067

Keywords: japanese tea, japanese countryside, japan revitalization, japan renewal, dmatcha, green tea, green tea japan, lwif, life where im from

Id: LEh697_p79I

Length: 24min 0sec (1440 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 09 2022