-Georges Duhamel

I swore I’d never use the peace sign for a photo. It’s now a part of me.

4 months and 13 days. 133 days. 19 weeks. 3192 hours. 191,520 minutes. 11,491,200 seconds. That makes a lot of memories. Many of which I will forget until the most peculiar of incidents cause me to recall, with vibrant enthusiasm, what has arguably been the best time of my life thus far.

Who am I and What was I doing in Wazuka, Kyoto, Japan?

Metaphysics aside, my name is TJ Williamson and I have one hell of a passion for tea. The past 4 months have served as my final semester for college, a semester I was initially to spend in Turku, Finland. Of course, knowing that tea was to play a large role in my life, I decided to look elsewhere on the off chance I would find something more fitting. As it turns out, asking questions can turn up unexpected answers. Elyse Peterson (founder of Tealet.com) was soon in contact with me over LinkedIn and recommended Obubu as the perfect place to start my face-to-face exploration into tea. With just short of a month left to start my internship, I jumped at the opportunity, never to look back.

During the months you were here, what seemed to be the objectives, projects, and duties you had during the Obubu Internship Program? 

I should know the answer to this question, being that I was the one who restructured and organized the entire program. Prior to my arrival Obubu only had one intern at any given time. Thankfully they paved the road for me, giving me the materials and direction needed to revitalise and grow the internship program. Although, given the work I and the rest of the intern team have done, I disagree with the designation “intern”. An intern typically does not interact with the customers and shadows a current member of staff. I’ve been hosting tea tours and negotiating sales contracts with multinational companies and individuals………I’m more of an International Department Manager. It was my duty to set SMART objectives, prepare the team for the week/day/task, maintain moral, ensure progress, and keep everyone happy, working efficiently and productively  Solving any issues or delays were my responsibility as well as giving the final go-ahead on upcoming or intended projects. It was solely my responsibility to engage in with clientèle  developing business relationships and securing sales as my knowledge of Obubu’s mechanics and abilities were strongest.

I’ve  taken the liberty to summarize the major objectives/duties/projects since my arrival:

• Recreate the Internship Program: Create the introduction guidebooks, contracts, rental agreements, and handbooks for arriving interns. Recruit, interview, hire, and manage all interns before, during, and after their stay at Obubu.
• Create a seamless, efficient, and effective direction guide to Obubu from major cities such as Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo to assist tourists and interns find there way with ease.
• Market, manage, schedule, host, and keep contact with tourists for Obubu’s Tea Tours. Goal is to secure a minimum of four tea tours a month
• Accompany Obubu on events both in Wazuka and Kyoto to foster business relations and increase the Obubu brand
• Partner with local businesses to increase company awareness and enable networking to increase sales
• Construct Obubu’s Wholesale program. Price all the teas, shipping costs, develop an internal database and catalogue, contact and form relationships with interested retailers/buyers.
• Begin the expansion of the tea fields by creating new fields, setting up irrigation, and planting 4000 tea seedlings
• Host and participate in numerous tea picking and processing events to expand knowledge on tea production
• Reconstruct Obubu’s website. Learn WordPress and fix/amend any and all problems with the website. Goal to become as user friendly as possible, optimizing website navigation
• Improve the SEO of Obubutea.com to increase website traffic and sales. Our goal is to move up to the front page of Google from the third and to increase traffic to 500 unique visitors per day
• Formulate a schedule and campaign for Twitter, Youtube, and in-site Blogs. Goal to have a minimum number of tweets/day, videos/month, and blogs/week
• Expand the current Japanese only “Ownership Program” into an English equivalent ”Obubu Club”. A subscription service offering the international community the chance to “own” a portion of Obubu’s tea fields and receive bi-monthly tea shipments

Concrete Skills and Applicable Skills Gained by working at Obubu:

Being the Manager of all the interns imparts a significant amount of responsibility. Luckily for me I had a great team to work with (what

Although I was plenty busy with work, I never missed a chance to steal away and see the sites.

can I say, I chose them myself). Here’s a list of  skills I’ve both developed and honed while at Obubu:

• Interpersonal Skills - talking, communicating, discussing, and deciding are things everyone does day-to-day and may seem irrelevant. However it’s surprising how easy it is to miscommunicate or forget to mention something. Knowing this I made sure everyone was always on the same page.
• Computer Software and Literacy –  I may not have a degree in Programming or Software Engineering, however my skills with computers are more than competent. Yet there is always more to learn. WordPress, Social Media platforms and their interactions with each other, and Excel are simple examples. Also the usefulness of Dropbox and Freemind have been exceptionally useful.
• Business Skill-set - Although I come from a business background, seeing things in the real world is always going to be different than the classroom. Pricing the Wholesale Catalogue is a prime example of ensuring we make a profit but are fair to our customers. Taking customer orders, packaging, shipping, and maintaining relationships with clientèle are much more important and stressful in the field. It was good for us then to have a schedule, set goals and targets (especially for website traffic, tweets, and blogs) because reaching those targets always gives us a sense of accomplishment and inspiration.
• The Tea Industry – Office skills are important, but we’d be foolish to forget about why I came here in the first place: my love of tea. Planting, propagation, farming, harvesting, processing, brewing, and serving tea are all included at Obubu. I can now do all of this, and might I add that it was the most entertaining and fun aspect of my stay here.

What were some of the things you accomplished at Obubu?

Most of what I accomplished or set out to accomplish is listed under the second question of this blog post. Rather then re-explain my business/job objectives, here I’ll take a more personal approach and lightly discuss my private accomplishments.

I have always wanted to travel, and indeed intend on doing much more of it! Jumping on the plane and flying over to Japan has been the best decision and accomplishment I have made for myself. Never would I have thought I would make so many friends and network with so many people. I sought out to enrich myself with worldly experiences and other cultures and I can proudly say I have and became a better person because of it.

I am already considering where to travel next, the people I’ll meet and the ideas I’l come up with. As an entrepreneur I’m always seeking a new concept and idea. One of my goals prior to leaving was to come back with several. Looking at my pocketbook and the notes I’ve accumulated  I know that I’ve succeeded, ready to move forward with whatever comes next.

Strengths of the Intern Program Structure?

The programs strength comes from Obubu’s flexibility. In all honestly, Obubu is still a growing business. Certainly we have our

For the longest time I had only seen tea at the end of its journey. Seeing it from the beginning brings things full circle.

growing list of accomplishments and recognitions, however the expansion of the international department where the interns spend the majority of their time allows for much experimentation.

Whether it be developing and creating a new method of sales (The Obubu Club), changing Obubu’s business model (Wholesale vs. Retail), tackling Public Relations (Twitter, Blogs, Youtube), or wanting to experiment with tea itself (I’ve been both growing and making my own tea for the past month now), Obubu has the desire and willingness to let you explore your own capabilities and desires, testing you against yourself, seeing what works and what doesn’t,  trial and error, failure and success.

Long Term Projects?

Being at Obubu for 4 months has allowed me to become quite familiar with the company, its operations, and its methodology. So it’s not wonder that with me leaving, the rest of the interns may face a bit of hardship as they lose a valuable source of information (with me being able to speak English, it’s much easier to communicate how and why we do things, as well as what to do).

But never fear! I have been slowly putting together a mid-long term project/goal outline for my fellow interns so as not to leave them stranded. I’ll give you a sneak peek at some projects we’ve been mulling over:

1. Changing the Tea Tours. Currently we accept tea tour applications for any day during the week. Sadly this can prove very difficult to work around. We have therefore decided to create tear tours with fixed dates and times. This has come after much thought and consideration as most of our tea tours are for foreign tourists; we want to be as accessible as possible. We’ll also be holding special weekend tours!
2. Initiating the Obubu Club, a subscription program for our tea. Currently limited to Japan, the Obubu Club will be available worldwide. Unlike other tea subscription services, with the Obubu Club you’ll receive tea straight from our tea field right after our harvests! No middleman, just you and Obubu! Farm Fresh!

Conclusion

While it has only been 1/3 of a year, it has seen like both an eternity and a second. I suppose they are much the same thing. I can’t summarize the experience I have had here in Japan into words, if anything I’ve learnt English is lacking a few of the words I need.

My adventure has been in moments. Learning a word. Seeing a face. Sipping some tea. I can’t recall them all, but they happened and I’m better off for it.

I’ll be back someday soon. My wanderlust is just starting to grow. I’ll be in touch of course. You can always check in on me at my personal website tea2cha to see what adventures I’m getting myself into.

Best Wishes Friends.

TJ Williamson

The post Japanese Tea Farm Internship: A Conclusion appeared first on Kyoto Obubu Tea Farms.

The menu has some of the most popular Obubu teas: kabuse sencha, houjicha, genmaicha and others, and since we were in no rush we probably ended up trying them all. With a cup of good tea and a lovely company you don’t notice the time passing at all. Not to forget the sweets that go with tea. In addition to youkan we also had some vanilla ice-cream with matcha poured on top of it. Sweet ice-cream with a hint of matcha bitterness is a fantastic experience for the taste receptors! Right in the busy Daimaru department store, Obubu Tea café is a place to take a break with a cup of tea, so don’t miss it when you visit Kyoto.

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In the previous post Simona told about our Saturday morning in the tea fields. We spent around 2 hours picking tea with tea farmers surrounded by a beautiful landscape with a really nice weather. But making tea is not just picking it. For a handmade tea, a 6 hours process is required and there are several steps which are all very important. We began the process with 12kg of fresh tea leaves and guess what! At the end, we only had 2,5kg of tea ! What happens from the moment we pick the tea and put it in a package?

First of all, we steam the fresh tea leaves in a steamer for 40 seconds, remove the lid in order to stir the leaves for 10sec and finally we cover them one more time for another 10 seconds. We steam the tea because high temperatures destroy the enzymes present in the tea and stop fermentation and oxidation. It’s also the steam that gives the tea its aroma and its rich flavors. Moreover, the steam makes the leaves softer and easier to knead.

The next step consists of stirring the leaves while fans are cooling them down. When the leaves can be manipulated by hands, we can proceed to the next step.

We will dry the leaves by shuffling them above a “Hoiro” which is a table made with Japanese paper. The “Hoiro” has a built-in stove set at 80°C. Throughout this process, the tea is continually and gently shuffled. This step takes around 50 minutes before we can knead the tea.

Kneading tea, by itself, is a 3 steps process: the light rolling, the heavy rolling and the “heavier” rolling. During those 3 steps, the moisture comes out little by little drying the leaves. It’s the most physical part in the process and also the longest one. During the kneading process the tea gathers and forms small balls that we have to unravel one by one.

Finally, we need almost one hour to press and roll the tea until it takes its final shape, we want it to have the appearance of fine needles. The last step is to dry the leaves. We put it in a dryer at 75°C, wait for 20min before turning it over and heat for another 20 minutes. And the tea is ready to drink! Unfortunately, we won’t have the chance to taste this one, this one will be auctionned off! So, how much for our lovely handpicked and handmade tea? (watch all the process in video => Hand made tea)

Intern Angie

The post Tea Processing appeared first on Kyoto Obubu Tea Farms.

Tea in Japan is harvested and processed mostly with the help of machines. That is because doing it by hand gets to be too expensive and time consuming. Occasionally, though, tea is still picked and processed by hand to maintain long-lived traditions and produce the highest quality tea.

Such tea picking is an event for the whole town community and everyone is happy to contribute their picked tea leaves to a single basket that then goes to a tea factory.

Obubu interns: TJ, Angie, David and me had an opportunity to participate in the  handpicking of the first flush of Wazuka’s Sencha last Saturday. While it meant that Saturday had to start with an early morning, it paid off well. Being in a morning sunlit tea field up in the mountains, can only be described with a Japanese word – kimochi – a fantastic feeling!

It was also fascinating how delicate and tender new tea shots were. To produce Sencha we had to pick a tea bud and two youngest leaves of a

shot. Each shot ha

d to be picked with care by gently bending the stem just below the second leave to separate it from the older part of the plant. We were told not to use fingernails, as that would damage tea cells and start oxidation before tea reaches a factory, that in turn would affect its quality. After some more experienced tea pickers showed us the right way to do it, we were on the go and in 2,5 hours were able to pick a few hundred grams of tea leaves.

Whoever gets to drink it, we hope they will enjoy!

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Located in the main house, this tea room for two was taken straight out of my imagination

In early March I had the pleasure of joining Obubu for an event hosted by the International Friendship Force. Aside from being called something I swear I’ve heard in a manga novel, the day was actually very enjoyable. I met people from all over the world, tasted some great cuisine, and even learnt a song or two. However the best thing I took away was a phone number and a promise. A promise to take a few hours out of my weekend to pay a visit to some new friends.

What I didn’t expect was a tour of a 150 year old house, a lunch fit for a king, an exceptionally well tended Japanese garden, and some of the finest Matcha I have ever tasted. The rewards of fulfilling my promise were well received. Heck, I’m still eating the bamboo sprouts I was able to dig up as I wandered the Persimmon field.

Perhaps it was being surrounded by tea lovers or maybe the fact that I had little sleep the night before, but I stood entranced as I was able to witness the preparation of a cup of Matcha by a lady who had dedicated her life to welcoming others into her home. Sometimes it isn’t the tea, but the one preparing it that makes it special. Luckily for me, I had both. And as soon as that frothy green soup touched my lips I was more then happy I booked the day off.

The Japanese Tea Ceremony is very strict on placement and positioning

Now, with the house being over 150 years old, their was a special surprise for me to see: an authentic Japanese Tea Ceremony teahouse. The perfectly positioned tatami mats, the dugout hearth, the inset alcove, the hanging scroll, the calligraphy, the flower arrangements…..I could go on. Everything in this place was measured and positioned. I can still see the garden’s beautiful tailored trees reaching for the blossoming sakura flowers when I close my eyes.

I think I’ll create a teahouse when I return home. With the effort my parents put into gardening themselves, I think a teahouse would be a welcomed addition.

You may have noticed by now that I have not touched on the Matcha itself. This has been intentional. I want this article to focus more on the atmosphere of the Japanese Tea Ceremony.

While I do love to make Matcha, Japanese furniture has a way of disrupting my plans

While the tea is important, I would argue that the method to make it and the time invested ensuring people enjoy watching you make it are more important. I could forgive a bad cup of tea if I could enjoy the gardens and calligraphy. In a way, they make the tea taste better. Several hundred years of perfecting the  tea ceremony have indeed paid off. Seeing how an authentic ceremony takes 4 hours to complete gives evidence enough to the Japanese dedication to relaxation and aesthetic pleasure. Coupled with a trip to the onsen and it’s a wonder why I don’t live here permanently! Speaking of which, I’m about due for another onsen visit. Luckily for me, this weekend is free.

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Given the shape of the tea plants, you need to make two passes over them in opposite directions.

The expansion of Obubu has been swift and incredibly welcomed; Matsu-san wont stop bragging about his international interns/friends to the community over the many cups of tea. Speaking of which, we finally had our first harvest, Kyou Bancha!

As I mentioned in my previous article, Kyou Bancha is a flat (unrolled), steamed tea which is dried through roasting. In fact Kyou Bancha is by all means a Houjicha.

Now although this harvest is the first of the year, it is not “Shincha”. This harvest was conducted to gather the foliage from tea plants which were not touched last season; instead they were left to grow so as to thicken the plant. The Shincha harvest will happen in May, from the same plant, and produce our Spring Sun Sencha and our Kabuse Sencha. After that will be the Bancha harvest in July and then the Ni-Bancha harvest in August.

The smell in the room was amazing, sadly the leaves weren’t. I have no patience.

We collected roughly 30 bags of leaves from the harvest and were rushing to the processing factory as the sun was setting by the time we had tied the bags down on the truck. “Yeeeeaaahhhh, here we GO!”, Akky proclaimed as we sped down the road, following the Wazuka River. I swear the guy becomes just a little too happy when around his tea.

After measuring the truck on the scales at the factory we proceeded to empty the bags into what can only be described as a giant steel box. This is where the steaming process takes place, effectively stopping the oxidation of the leaves and changing their chemical make-up. After an hour, the once green leaves are now a faint brown.

Seriously, it:s heavier then it looks.

The process is nearly complete as within 40 minutes, after drying the leaves on a dual conveyor/slow roasting machine, the new Kyou Bancha is ready to be packaged and stored. All it takes after this is some near boiling water and 40 seconds to give you a deliciously light and flavourful cup. Since the leaves are not rolled, the elusion of the compounds within the leaf is deceitfully quick, leaving you with only 1-2 steepings depending on how weak you like your tea. Nevertheless it’s great to wash down those greasy meals!

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Living abroad can be challenging at times, but to tell the truth my stay has had a great start so far. Everyone here is really friendly and welcoming. On my very first day there was an appreciation party by Obubu to everyone who helped in organizing Wazuka’s tea festival last year. It was great to see so many people interested in tea and willing to join the effort. The following day also brought a pleasant surprise – a tea tour by our VP Matsumoto san, that was a perfect opportunity to deepen the knowledge of Japanese tea culture as well as to taste some of Obubu’s own production. I thought I knew what sencha tastes like, but Obubu’s Kabuse Sencha completely surprised me with its rich and grassy flavor!

There will be more events and projects coming up, so stay in touch and look for our updates.

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Back in college my economics professor once took great pleasure providing me with an anecdotal explanation of Diminishing Marginal Utility using beer. The same, unfortunately could be said for tea. The more you have of something, the less you want it. It was time to move on and treat my taste buds to new flavours! “But where to venture?” I mused, as I pondered what the next week of my life would entail. Be it by fate or fortune I can to realize that some mere kilometres away was the Korean peninsula, and along with it Korea! So off I went with eager anticipation!

Sadly, 7 days pass all too quickly and here I sit upon the tatami mat floor once more. I saw plenty of sights, met some great people, and of course became enthralled in the booming Puerh culture. I suggest you take a visit yourself if you have the chance!

April will be a very interesting month indeed, so pay close attention to the happenings here at Obubu. We have two more interns arriving this month, making a grand total of four! Obubu’s tea farm internship program is seeing tremendous growth! A record breaking amount! Matsu-san couldn’t be more happy. David brings with him over 5 years of tea retail experience as he currently owns and operates a tea shop out of New Mexico, USA. Simona, our first Lithuanian intern, has a passion for tea that has only been mentioned in the legends of old. Be careful folks, these interns mean business, and I look forward to their company!

In the mean time Akky-san will be leading the march into the tea fields as tomorrow will see our first harvest! I finally get my hands on a harvester and I couldn’t be more excited.  Momo-chan has been informing me that the harvested leaves are bound to become Kyou Bancha, a non-rolled and roasted Bancha with a mild and pleasant taste, seems fitting with this calm Spring air and the fading Sakura blossoms.

Don’t you fret however, I’ll be posting another update tomorrow to let you know just how things went! I may even sneak a few leaves away and experiment making tea myself!

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Hello! My name’s Neil, and I interned at Obubu for one month (ish) from March 1 to April 5^th 2013. Just before I arrived, Obubu moved offices across town a little ways, so I guess it might seem to everyone I came with the new house. It certainly feels weird to leave so soon after getting here!

Arriving at Wazuka, there was an awesome intern from Canada who came all the way out to the bus stop to greet me and introduce me to everything at Obubu. Less than a week after arriving, a wonderful intern from France also came to Obubu. I know they will be around for a few months yet, so maybe they will greet you and make you feel right at home working and living at Obubu.

The first day, there seems like an awful a lot of stuff to go over! I’m not so great with computers, so getting hooked up to the network, this thing called dropbox for sharing files, and all the Obubu social media accounts seemed a little difficult, but after a few days it all made sense.

To be really honest, this internship isn’t really made in the office. Rather, its about….well….I it’s about everything! I really got to learn and participate in a little of everything! A little yard work, a little carpentry, a little office work, a little English teaching, a little translation, a little website building, a little event-organizing and assisting, and before I knew it – a whole month had passed!!

I personally really enjoyed being out in the fields. Others might say I came at a tough time, but spending close to ten days out planting baby tea trees in the fields was one of the best experiences in Japan so far! If you get a chance to go out in the fields, with your raincoat and little lunch bento, I bet you will have a great time!

I can’t really say much about the day to day activities you expect, because every day is an adventure and plan as you try, life at Obubu is just too laid back and crazy for me to know exactly what you will experience and sort of memories you will make!

At least during the month of March, what seemed to be the objectives of the Obubu Internship Program?

The internship program at Obubu is a new program, and is still in the early stages of development. Participating in the intern program for the duration of one month during early March, I believe the intern program currently operates under the following objectives:

• Introduce people from outside Japan to Japanese culture and work environment through participating in office activities, and public cultural events. Interns are invited into the homes of the office employees and some members of the local community to introduce Japanese culture and life to interns.
• Provide maintenance and support to the office environment. Interns participate in labor associated with developing the physical office space at Obubu. Examples include moving supplies, carpentry, caring for the wood burning stove, and painting. These activities exist both betcause more interns are coming to live at Obubu, and because the office recently moved into a house.
• Participate in farming activities when necessary. During busy times such as planting and harvesting, interns will support the farmers at obubu, and learn the fundamentals of agriculture and tea farming.
• Manage contacts and logistics of tea tours. Tea tours are operated in English, and are managed by interns. Tea tours are good business for Obubu.
• Increase traffic to the Obubu English sales site through social media activities including writing blogs, twitter, pintrest, facebook, and youtube.
• Increase Public Relations in Japanese Market by being a presence at Obubu’s local outreach events. Interns will express their reasons for coming to study at Obubu to show the reality foreign interest in Japanese tea, especially Ujicha, and Japanese culture.
• Interns will cooperate and self-manage a dormitory style living space, above the Obubu office. Cooking, laundry, cleaning, and maintenance are shared responsibilities among the interns.
• Create and manage self-directed projects connected with improving Obubu’s outreach into foreign markets. Examples include responding to foreign customers, cooperating with Tokyo-based business partners.

Concrete Skills and Applicable Skills Gained by working at Obubu:

• Gain proficiency in the Japanese language at any level. Interns with no prior exposure to Japanese will learn greetings and useful vocabulary, and become familiar with the Japanese writing system Hiragana. Interns with mid-levels of Japanese will improve daily discourses and improve clarity of expression. Advanced students will refine expression, learn advanced business and agricultural vocabulary, and act as interpreters and translators both from Japanese to English and English to Japanese.
• Learn the basics of WordPress and refine skills with excel and MS word while creating documents for use in the Obubu office and for customers.
• Understand the basics of business project management and self responsibility
• Learn about tea, tea production, tea culture, tea drinking: everything tea.
• Learn about behavior and etiquette in a variety of professional, and ‘Japanese’ settings.
• Network with Japanese tea farmers, craftsmen, and businessmen. Network with cafe owners and tea industry professionals operating outside Japan through tea tours.
• Self-directed projects and personal accountability.
• Group cooperation in a work environment.

What were some of the things you accomplished at Obubu?

• Functioned as effective day laborer both in tea fields and in office maintenance (primary)
• Improved communication between interns and the office and expanded English-language office materials with translation work.
• Aided Obubu’s public outreaches by serving tea lots of places and sharing my love for studying tea at Obubu.
• Helped set precedent of potential intern responsibilities: meeting minutes, duties, file forms etc
• (Hopefully) increased traffic to Obubu website through social media activity and blog entries

Strengths of the Intern Program Structure:

We are allowed to pursue projects with some degree of freedom, allowing us to be self-responsible and work with our own deadlines. This is goods since interns will be all over the place, gaining tons of experiences and can’t expect a consistent work schedule.

Being allowed to meet so many different people; Japanese farmers, craftsmen, etc, is a great thing and I am grateful Obubu supports us interns in this way.

Working in tea fields is something I don’t know could have happened if Obubu didn’t have this program.

What are some concrete examples of projects you work on at Obubu?

With three interns here, we were able to work on some rewarding projects this month!  Here are some examples of project interns do:

Title: Obubu Access Directions:

Contents: We understand that it can be hard to get from a major station in Kyoto or Osaka to a small place like Wazuka, so we went to take pictures of exactly how to get to Obubu from different places in Kansai, and put up step by step directions of everything from buying a train ticket to which train platform to wait at for trains. We organized this information and made PDF’s which are currently on this Website.

Title: Spread Obubu’s tea to bloggers throughout the world

Contents: Obubu has over 17 types of tea, and we took it upon ourselves to drink three pots of every tea and take notes on what steeping methods work and which don’t, and assimilated three opinions on the flavor into descriptions which accurately reflect the flavor and nature of each tea in English.

From here, we worked to look for bloggers who would enjoy sampling and evaluating our tea. Our bloggers are in Japan, the United States, and France, but we are always looking to spread obubu tea new places.

This project was done as a joint effort with Yunomi.us.

Title: Make our office a more liveable space: let’s get to work!

Contents: We made this office more livable by moving truckloads of wood, moving dirt and stones, and doing basic carpentry work to make our office a better work and living environment.

Title: Translation of Obubu Information and Advertising Materials (IN PROGRESS)

Contents: Text translation of information about Obubu’s Teas, Business Model, and products from obubu.com and print materials (magazine, news articles etc) in office from Japanese to English.

Details:  Obubu Tea magazine contains descriptions of what makes obubu tea unique (transparency, natural growing methods, etc). These should be translated.

Obubu Website contains a wealth of information not on English Website. We should look to update English website.

Title: Social Media “Projects” (IN PROGRESS)

Contents: We use twitter and the intern blog regularly, but have let pintrest, facebook, and youtube fall by the wayside.

Details: Youtube: Make video about How to steep tea. Unlike other teas, steeping Obubu’s tea improperly has a large impact on the flavor. Use Hayato san and set up the kama (iron pot) and make good presentation about brewing our teas.

Facebook: Organize images on Obubu Hard Drive from recent events for usage on facebook

Pintrest: Also utilize Obubu Hard Drive archive images.

Long Term Projects:

It would be amazing to get the ITFA get off the ground.

Future Interns: GOOD LUCK AND HAVE FUN!!!!!!!!!!!

The post A Greeting to Future Interns and Parting Words appeared first on Kyoto Obubu Tea Farms.

Planting tea trees is an exciting time at the tea fields, especially since the field looks much different after being filled with rows of tea plants. Since the tea plants are so small (and adorable), it is tempting to say that we are busy planting “baby tea trees.” However, when we transplant little tea trees into a sandy loam to grow large and strong, tea plants grown from seed are already over two years old! Most tea plants which we plant are not grown up directly from seed, but rather branches cut from older, well established tea plants. After the root system begins to grow out, and we transplant these plants into the field.

Interning at Obubu, helping out with the tea planting has turned out to be been one of the most rewarding experiences during my time here. Considering that nowadays most of us are living in cities far away from tea fields, the opportunity to participate in helping grow tea is quite rare so I wanted to make the best of the opportunity. Understanding that there are lots of tea lovers out there who want to get to the roots of what tea really is, Obubu helps bring groups in the local community closer to tea by organizing ‘Experience Tea Planting’ events.

Wazuka Middle School Planting Event

On a cloudy Wednesday morning, after getting dressed for Physical Education class, seventh grade students at Wazuka Middle School hopped on buses not to a museum or to a temple, but just as far as down the hill to one of Obubu’s tea fields. Even though Wazuka is famous for tea, most of the students had never been to a tea field before. Akki-san tenderly took the small tea plants into his hands and demonstrated how to plant them to the middle school students. Before arriving, us interns at Obubu helped prepare holes of the right size for planting. With all the students, we all helped to plant the tea plants. I was surprised and impressed by how carefully and attentively the students held the tea plants and put them in the ground in neat, straight, rows, that made Obubu’s lead farmer, Akki-san, smile wide.

From this time, it will take about five to seven before the tea plants can be harvested. In Japan, turning twenty is an important turning point which marks the transition into adulthood, legally and socially. This means the students at the middle school will grow up and became adults just as the tea plants mature enough to be harvested for tea; the community of Wazuka is growing up together. With this bright future in mind, the middle school students seemed to enjoy getting out of the classroom and getting a chance to see a new side of tea most had never encountered before.

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