On February, we had a guest from Finland.

We met in Germany food show, Anuga and he visited our booth.
I was pretty impressed about his enthusiasm about learning Japanese tea and I offered him to come to Japan for tea tour.

Mr. Riku Nordqvist came here right away.

He owns his tea company in Finland and he has a big knowledge about black tea and herbal infusion through his study in Germany and also the experience from the family business.

Anyway, we went to Uji, Kyoto in the day 1.

We visited Mr. Harima who is very famous about the pioneer of organic green tea in Uji, Kyoto. He is the 1st one who did it from 1970.
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Making organic tea tree is very and very difficult in Japan due to the climate. Many tea growers are still failing to shift from non organic tea tree to organic tea tree.
Becoming organic tea tree is like a fat man becomes Olympic athlete.

You can see how the tree is different from conventional tea tree. It's thick!
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Then we went to The SADO master, Mr. Imanishi's his private tea room.
He owns his matcha rough tea processing factory (Tencha factory) near by his house.

Riku learned each process from raw leaf - steaming - drying - and heating of matcha leaf: Tencha at there like he works at there. 

Then we move onto Mr. Yano's finished tea factory to see stone mill.

Japanese tea business is roughly 3 parts; (1) Tea garden (farm), (2) Rough tea factory : steaming raw leaf. (3) Finished tea factory :  Sorting, cleaning, re-heating and blending if need.
Sencha and Matcha has a different way to grow and also different method of making rough tea.
Sencha rough tea, we call it Aracha. Matcha rough tea, we call it Tencha.
They are usually all separate company.

Riku checks Tencha leaf very careful by seeing aroma and color, thickness of leaf since the leaf price of low grade and high grade is 5 times different.
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After that, he goes for tea tasting for evaluate his Japanese tea(s) for 2016 products.

Tencha (matcha leaf), Sencha, and Gyokuro.
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He picked up his favores ones.
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The next day, we visited Nishio, Aichi.
This region is probably the biggest matcha gardens in Japan.

While most of Uji matcha farm is very small sized family owned gardens, Nishio gardens are big sized and organized.

Usually, aorund February is the most cold month in Japan and trees don't look good, but Nishio gardens have good trimmers and trees look very healthy.
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During 2 days, we just talked about green tea from A to Z. No time for rest.
I was really happy to see the guy from him that showed us the interest to Japanese tea and tea production in depth.

Hope he introduce Japanese tea and culture in Finland.
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 If you have any question, please contact to
www.jp-greentea .co.jp/english