For Yasuko and Junji Kadota, too, the shincha season is approaching, even if the harvest starts relatively late for them. Their tea garden tends to grow only late-growing shrub varieties. Yabukita is their earliest.
During our telephone conversation, Yusuke tells us about his recent trip to Tokyo to visit tea shops and offer his teas there. He tells us that interest in Kamairicha is growing in Tokyo. While in recent years less and less Kamairicha has been sold through the normal wholesale channels, the interest of independent tea shops and passionate tea drinkers in this rarity is growing. Years ago we met a group of tea lovers from Tokyo who travelled to Kyushu at harvest time to help with the harvest and produce their own Kamairicha. The fascinating thing about kamairi production is that it is mainly manual and therefore manageable. You can learn an incredible amount about the individual tea processing steps. Another special feature of Kadotas is that they use tea equipment that is about 100 years old: A short excursion into the past of tea production in Japan