Tea Harvesting

The beautiful Tenryu river


Tea field

This weekend we headed down to Joe's village of Tenryu to do some tea-picking. Only the light green leaves poking out the top of the tea bush are picked and processed, and if I understood the Japanese correctly, 30 kg of unprocessed tea leaves become 5kg of processed tea ready for use. After picking we visited the local tea-processing plant, which smelt heavily of, yes you guessed it, tea. Yes another wild and wacky inaka adventure!


Tea! Yes, tea!


Those ancient Chinese were on to something the first time they picked this and boiled it...

Tenryu itself is far more inaka than my village and the scenery is absolutely gorgeous. The tea field/farm we were harvesting was located on the side of a tall mountain on one side of a big valley, the Tenryu river running through the centre. The scope of it made my eyes blur!