Kyoto’s Most Unique Tea Tasting Experience

Oh my gosh! Tea culture is everything in Japan. From vending machine teas, to the tea leaves brewed at home, to even the pre- and post-meal tea served at restaurants. It's just part of life here. But have you ever wondered how it's all made? Well today I've got a behind-the-scenes look at a tea farm to see just how tea is made and what it's like to be a tea farmer in Japan. Before we go, don't forget to subscribe for more Japan adventures. Today I am in Wazuka, a tea town on the southern edge of Kyoto Prefecture, with a population of only about 3,600 people. But it produces nearly half of the tea in all of Kyoto. And roughly 300 families dedicate their lives to tea production here every single day. So let's learn how tea is made here and see what it's like to be a tea farmer in Wazuka, Japan. Let's go! I have arrived here now at Obubu Tea Farms. This is a really wonderful tea farm here in Kyoto and it has a really popular tea tour and tasting experience that's actually available on BuyFood, which you can join on the links down below. But I'm going to be joining it today and I'm going to have a chance to check out their tea farm and try a really wide variety of their local Kyoto teas. I'm really, really excited. So let's go inside and check it out. Hello! Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Welcome to Obubu Tea Farm. Thank you. I am Joy and I will be your host today for the tea tour. So I will kindly ask you to remove your shoes so we can go into the tea room. Oh, thank you. Wow. It's a beautiful tea room. Welcome to Obubu Tea Farm! We are so happy to have you here today. My name is Hiro. I am one of the co-founders of Obubu and a Japanese tea instructor. My name is Jean. I come from France and I love tea. I would like to share my passion with you today. I cannot wait to be a tea master! So today we'll start with a short presentation in this room about Wazuka and about Obubu Tea Farm. Then we'll rush to the tea fields so you'll be able to discover how we make tea and the tea fields of Wazuka. Let's go to the tea fields! Let's go! It's like an adventure. Tea adventure, yes! Over there! Oh, look at the view! Wow! I've never been so close to terraced tea fields before. This is very traditional tea. Oh, okay. Because we harvest usually three times per year. This is special. Add one more harvest. Cheers! Thank you! Cheers! Drinking tea on top of a tea field mountain! Itadakimasu! That's so good! Oh, and it's so warm. It's a pretty warm day today, but flies! Wow! That's cool! So it all goes into the bag with the air. Let's go to the tea factory! Tea factory! Okay, let's check it out! Let's go! Yay! Yes! Is it gonna be a roller coaster? Yes! Oh my gosh! I was not expecting this! All right, I've arrived back where we started after a very exhilarating roller coaster ride back here, which I was not expecting. But now we get to do a factory tour, and I'm going to try one of their teas right here in the factory. It's an original tea, which is a cherry blossom sencha tea. It looks so beautiful. Thank you so much! It looks so good, and you can even see the tea leaves right here. Actually, I can taste a little bit of the floral fragrance of it. This is so delicious! And this is an original tea here, right? Yes, so this is one of our special blend with sakura flowers, cherry blossom flowers, and leaves as well, mixed with one of our sencha. Wow, that's such a great idea! I think this is something that I've never seen before in Japan. It's very specific and special to Obubu. It's our secret recipe. So welcome to the tea factory! You are just coming back from the tea field, and you have, let's say, harvested a lot of tea. So now you are storing those tea leaves into those containers here behind you. Okay, these are the bags that Hiro-san was telling us about, where they shave the tea leaves and then they collect, they blow them into a giant bag up on the tea fields. This is the actual bags that they use. And then the first process is to steam the tea leaves at high temperature in this machine here that you can see. And this will steam the tea leaves at 100 degrees Celsius to stop the oxidation. And they will be sent into this tube to this next machine right here. Oh cool! So they travel all the way around the factory. It feels very like Willy Wonka's factory, you know? Some chocolates are flying, but tea leaves. Cool! And then they will be stored into this net and fall into this machine where they will be dried and rolled at the same time. Now we will be shaping the leaves into a needle, into their final shape. And we have a special machine that mimics the hand rolling of the human hand rolling of the needle shape. So this machine has a middle part that mimics the hand and that will roll the leaves into a needle shape. Wow, that is so interesting, the movement that it does! In the past, that means that people actually rolled each one by hand? Yes, so they would actually roll them together. There are some associations, especially one in Wazuka, a preservation association for this method of rolling tea. And they see this tea as very luxurious and is one of the highest grade tea that you can find in Japan. So after the shaping of the tea leaves, we need to dry the leaves further and we are using a special oven. And after this oven, we'll be able to package the leaves into those big bags. And here you have some autumn leaves. So the autumn leaves are very rough, but in spring you will only have the leaves and the needle shape. How do you take the branches out? So this tea will be used to make hojicha and for this specific hojicha, we're not gonna remove the branches. They will be roasted with the tea leaves. Wow, I've done a few factory tours before, but I've learned a lot more even than I've ever before in any tea factories. This is a lot of fun, but I am getting a little hungry. Is there anything that we can eat here? Yes, so next step is a lunch. We'll have a special tea lunch today. A tea lunch? I can't wait! We are going to have a ochazuke, a special tea lunch, also called bubuzuke here at Obubu. So we're going to mix tea with our rice and this will flavor the rice. So you can choose the tea that you want to mix the rice with. And we have a seasonal pickles, algae, nori. We also have the seaweed that is called kombu and that is mixed with genmaicha powder. Tea leaves that we cooked with sesame seeds and a little bit of soy sauce as well. Wow. We have a radish salad, konnyaku potato, it's the type of potato, bean salad, and you can add some wasabi or miso sauce as well. Wow, this looks amazing. What a great idea to do ochazuke so you can use your local tea. Exactly, yeah. So I will show you. I will choose the dark roast hojicha and I will pour a little bit of it onto the rice. Wow, so cool. It's my first time to see hojicha, roasted green tea, with ochazuke. I think it's quite uncommon. It is quite uncommon. We believe that sometimes the green tea for our guests can be a little bit too umami, so it depends on the taste. I would like to try the one I've never done before, hojicha. Thank you. Okay, now it's time for me to make my own ochazuke and choose my toppings. Okay, it's ready. Let's dig in. Yes. Itadakimasu. That is so good. This is way more flavorful than I was even imagining it to be. The kombu seaweed always adds umami, but it also has a little bit of this slightly sour taste to it, and then at the bottom, the hojicha green tea adds this kind of smoky roasted taste. So good, and each topping adds a different taste. It's really fun. How did you begin your job here? I come from an agricultural school in France. I did an internship back in 2019 for three months, and I loved it so much that I came back here as a staff member after graduating. So now it's been over 10 months, and I really enjoy it so far, but I will be back in France soon, but I believe that I can bring a to France about tea, so I'm very excited about this as well. And we are going to have some dessert as well. So this is a special mochi made with tea. So the light yellow is genmaicha, and the dark green is matcha. The brown one is hojicha. All right, let's give it a taste. Let's start with the genmaicha. That's so good. First of all, it's really icy cold, which is a really nice sensation. This one's got a little bit more of a jelly-like but slightly chewy texture, and you can really taste the green tea. Let's try the next one, the matcha mochi. This one's just really smooth. It's a little bit sweet. Let's try the last one, the hojicha, the roasted one. Oh, that's also really good, and it once again tastes like hojicha in one bite. Making a paste. Next step is hot water. Hot water. As much as possible, hot is good. First from a little bit of touch bottle. Then as much as possible, quickly. Then finish. Finally, this surface, gentle, gentle, gentle. Beautiful. It looks so good. Okay, so first, I get to try smoothing the matcha paste. And then finally, circle and up. Oh, tiny, tiny Fuji. Thank you. Traditionally, before drinking the matcha, we would eat a sweet, Japanese sweet called wagashi. So today, we're going to have a dorayaki, which is a Japanese type of pancake, and inside you have a white bean paste with matcha as well. I can taste the matcha. That's so good, and it really is green on the inside. All right, now that I've prepared my palate, I'm going to enjoy my fresh matcha tea. Oh, that's so good. It's so creamy, frothy, and smooth. This matcha tea is really, really easy to drink, and it's kind of naturally a little bit sweet, but I think most people abroad have a misconception about matcha, that you always put milk and something sweet, some kind of sweetener in it. In Japan, you wouldn't do that. So today's matcha is actually ceremonial grade, meant to be drank with only water, so no milk added, no sweetener added either, and it would be very creamy and sweet, even though you're not adding anything else. But there are different grades, and some matcha are meant for lattes or for cooking as well, and those matcha are much more bitter, so we would not recommend that you drink them directly with water. I have had so much tea today, and each one has been so unique, and everything has been such a fun experience in learning how it's made, actually seeing the equipment and getting to touch the equipment, and then learn how to make my own matcha. Everything has been so much fun and so educational. I would 1000% recommend this tea experience, and if you guys want to try this experience too, the links will be all down below. You definitely need to try this tour if you're a tea lover. Also, if you guys are super passionate about tea and you want to experience life as a tea farmer in Wazuka, then you guys can also come here and be an intern, which is super fun. So you guys can come do the next step and be an intern here, and you can hang out with these guys and learn how to be a tea farmer. Yay! We are waiting for you! Keep coming! Yay! You guys are sure to have a really, fun time, so please come to Wazuka and help stimulate the tea production and the tea culture here, and these guys are waiting. So if you guys enjoyed this video, please make sure to give us a like, comment, don't forget to share, and subscribe, and we'll see you guys very soon in another video. Thank you so much! Thank you! Bye!