Tea

April 27, 2010

Yesterday, when I came to Kanoya Nogyo, I was told that the students were picking tea leaves from 2nd-4th period and would I care to join them? Unfortunately, I hadn’t brought my camera, so you’ll just have to listen to my description unaided.

It was a warm, blue-sky day. The tea bushes were like row and rows of unruly hedges. Eager stems stretched out from their bushes and overcrowded the slim space between rows. I waded in, waist-deep in verdant leaves. One of the students explained that when you pulled up a stem, you had to look for one, two, three leaves, and then at the third, you broke off the tip of the stem. When I pulled it, it snapped like a pea pod—very satisfying. I plucked off three-leaved stems of tea for roughly ten minutes, before I had to go back and teach a class.

I learned later that the students would pick tea by hand for less than half a day and after that, the farm hands would bring in a machine to harvest the rest. The leaves would be transported to a factory where they would be roasted. The final product is the plastic bottle of 100% Seishun (Youth) brand tea that they sell at some convenience stores, with the ridiculously cute cartoon characters of a boy and girl in Nogyo uniforms. I’ve drank it before. It’s delicious.