“If a man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty.”
~Japanese Proverb
Ancient Asia and Old Japan extended down the sloped hills on either side of the modern freeway as we zipped along. Scalloped fields of emerald tea bushes stretched toward distant hills; farmers in pointed hats waded in flooded rice flats; a scarlet bridge linked two jade riverbanks. We passed Mt. Fuji, conical and cloud-covered, capped with snow despite the commencement of climbing season looming just six weeks away. 
It crowns the landscape of undulating tea plantations, silent as in centuries past. We glided along the Pacific Ocean, where net buoys dotted the calm water. We crossed the Oigawa River—when Japan was ruled from the western city of Kyoto this river was said to be the western boundary for East Japan’s ghosts and devils. We crossed anyway. 
Shizuoka Prefecture grows half of all Japanese tea. We visited Green-pia Makinohara to see the tea-making process step-by-step. Alongside the roads of Shizuoka we’d seen many pairs of harvesters, one on each side of the tea row, making their way down with tea harvesting machines. Some of these plots were just three tiny rows of tea bushes squeezed between houses. Green-pia was the opposite side of the spectrum—huge rooms of equipment industrialized the entire process. The leaves are heated, rolled, even packaged by machines. The heating and rolling stops the fermentation and reduces the moisture to about 3% of the original leaf. Surprisingly, the time frame from harvest to tea cup in one of these factories is just three hours!! But if you boil the leaves raw nothing happens. 
And did you know white, green, oolong and black tea all come from the same plant? White is harvested super early, green is unfermented, oolong is partially fermented and black is fermented. Oolong tea gives me a stomach ache always. And Japanese and Chinese green tea are different. Japanese green tea (sencha) is steamed as part of the drying process, so the brewed tea is a pretty light green color. Chinese green tea is not steamed, just dried and rolled, resulting in a sweeter tea that’s pale brown in color. Matcha, or powdered green tea, is different altogether in that it’s dissolved rather than steeped. And there is even another type of green tea: stem green tea. You can boil the stems with milk and sugar for a very refreshing chai. I bought some of that after the chai tea class. 
And did you know white, green, oolong and black tea all come from the same plant? White is harvested super early, green is unfermented, oolong is partially fermented and black is fermented. Oolong tea gives me a stomach ache always. And Japanese and Chinese green tea are different. Japanese green tea (sencha) is steamed as part of the drying process, so the brewed tea is a pretty light green color. Chinese green tea is not steamed, just dried and rolled, resulting in a sweeter tea that’s pale brown in color. Matcha, or powdered green tea, is different altogether in that it’s dissolved rather than steeped. And there is even another type of green tea: stem green tea. You can boil the stems with milk and sugar for a very refreshing chai. I bought some of that after the chai tea class.
“There are three stages of boiling: the first boil is when the little bubbles like the eye of fishes swim on the surface; 
the second boil is when the bubbles are like crystal beads rolling in a fountain; the third boil is when the billows surge wildly in the kettle.”
the second boil is when the bubbles are like crystal beads rolling in a fountain; the third boil is when the billows surge wildly in the kettle.” ~Kakuzo Okakura
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It can reasonably be said that I like tea. I like the tooting of the kettle; I like listening for the first boil, when tiny bubbles form and the water starts to hum; I like the smell while it steeps and the happy caffeinated perk after it’s gone. I like the variety of flavors and sampling them all. I like the ceremony of high tea. I like the diversion and respite of afternoon tea. I like the sociability of a tea party. I like tea!
At the Charleston Tea Plantation two summers ago we sampled and bought only black tea. In Shizuoka, green tea is the order of the day. Green tea, it turns out, should not be made with water that is too hot; this scalds the tea and makes it bitter. That explains a lot. I like the green tea—hot or cold—that pops out of every vending machine in Japan, but I often find home-brewed green tea distasteful. Well, no longer! I bought a bottle of green tea grown and brewed at Greenpia and some Greenpia leaf green tea, plus a block of green tea anko (bean paste). We headed home across intersecting hills of brilliant green under a setting sun and I wondered if the first Westerners to explore this land were reminded of the rows of vineyards back home.
Recommended Reading:
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TEA East & West edited by Rupert Faulkner
I saw this book at a tea shop in Kyoto and had to have it. Brief and readable with beautiful pictures of tea utensils, pomp and ceremony, this book gives a fascinating rundown of tea’s influence across the world. Did you know clipper ships were built to get tea around the world before it spoiled? Or that as tea rose in popularity among the lower classes of England, many lobbied against it in favor of beer for the lower classes?? That’s actually because people got a fair portion of their daily calories from their ale and spending money on food that could not nourish was deemed wasteful. Interesting, right?
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The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura
If you’ve ever waxed poetic about the joys of tea, or wished tea had its own religion (seriously: Teaism), or wished someone would write a book about how tea ceremony makes life better, let me know and you can borrow my copy.