Helloo, I’m Izzy, from the UK and I became intern number #200 when I arrived at Obubu in April 2025.
This is a little overview of the path that brought me here to Obubu, the things I learned during the internship, and my plans for the future. If you’re reading this and thinking about joining the internship, I hope you are inspired. If you are reading this and looking for a tea connect between Japan & the UK – hire me!
The road that brought me here started first with my interest in becoming closer to Japan. I first came to Japan on holiday with my little sister in the summer of 2018 where we spent a week volunteering on an organic vegetable farm in Horokanai (Hokkaido) through WWOOF. The work was challenging and the bugs were abundant, but the saving grace was the morning and afternoon tea breaks. Mitsue-san, the farm Okaasan, would call “ochashimasu” and bring out a box of okashi (Japanese sweets), including senbei, kalintou, kinako nejiri, and more, and brew some sencha or genmaicha. This daily ritual was such a treat and was the start of my love for Japanese tea and sweets.
Growing up in England, of course I love a cup of tea. But my personal interest and appreciation for tea was inherited from my mum, who has always been a massive tea fan of loose leaf teas, particularly jasmine and gunpowder green tea. In my family, we would have endless conversations over infusions of tea. Breakfast would be stretched out into the afternoon with tea and snacks until it was lunch time. Lunchtime would end with more tea and suddenly the sun was setting and we hadn’t left the kitchen. These moments are so valuable to me and they characterise my sense of home and community. It is these precious moments of slow connection facilitated by tea that drew me to it the most at first and sits at the core of my love for tea. The taste and quality also comes into it, which I later came to appreciate as I learned more.
Going back to my trip to Japan in 2018, at the hostel I was staying at in Sapporo, I made a serendipitous connection with the owners of a cocktail bar in Niseko called Bar Gyu+, which lead me to return to Japan a few months later on a working holiday visa. Over the course of the year I learned all about Japanese whisky, sake, and was exposed to the world of cocktails. I continued to work with Gyu+ for the opening of a pop-up garden bar, where I would explore cocktails further, with plenty of tasting and experimenting with botanical flavours, using the herbs and flowers from the edible herb garden we planted on site. I loved sharing the story of the drinks with guests, and learning about flavour combinations, taste testing and all of that fun stuff, and, like tea, I enjoyed the moment for connection that sharing time with someone for a drink would facilitate.
I found the Obubu internship online whilst searching for somewhere to spend the last few months of my working holiday visa. I reflected on my new found love for drink flavour profiles and pairings and an appreciation for Japanese tea from being exposed to daily tea culture whilst living here. As much as I love cocktails, I had found myself drinking more alcohol than I would prefer, as it is hard to resist such a beautifully crafted cocktail! So I thought it would be in my best interest to channel this passion into something healthier, but still with a story to tell and lots to learn, so the natural next step for me was tea! (Disclaimer: I have not abandoned the cocktails, in fact I am excited to explore integrating them with tea – I have been inspired by mixes by my friends in the cocktail world, and also with co-intern Jackie’s various delicious tea cocktail experimentations at Obubu!)
The application process for Obubu takes about 3 months in total, and due to the set seasonal periods, timing-wise it didn’t work out that time as my working holiday visa was expiring soon. Keen to return to Japan ASAP, it was my intention that I would come back to undertake the internship the next year. But of course, we all know what happened early 2020 that put a very large roadblock on this dream. During the lockdown I was casually exploring tea during with my abundance of free time, I fell in love with creative visual documents of tea such as ‘Journal du Thé’ by Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck, I attended tea tastings at Postcard Teas in London, and joined a webinar with master chasen maker Tanimura Tango. Feeling inspired, I decided I wanted to work with tea in some capacity, but I remained feeling like an imposter, as though I needed a more immersive experience with tea to really come to grips with it. This is what I hoped the internship could give me – Obubu continued to play on my mind.
I maintained my connection with Japan over 6 years, with my vision of working between Japan and UK in the future. I continued studying Japanese and keeping in contact with my friends. I also maintained this connection through working at Japanese cultural organisations, Japan House London and then the Daiwa Foundation. Before I knew it, 6 years had passed, and with the dream of studying tea in Japan still strong in my heart, I decided it was time for me to take the leap, quit my job, book my flight to Japan and apply for the internship (in that order – a lot was riding on this application – thank you Obubu for choosing me!)
Here is a picture of me taking Obubu over the landmark number of interns by becoming intern #200 (waheeey). I am so happy to have become part of this community, which I had been anticipating for some years.
I first arrived at Kamo station, and in a rush to catch the number 65 bus to Obubu, which runs only every hour, I saw a girl who had got off a few carriages along staring at me on the platform. We squinted at each other and said “Obubu?”, and then ran for the bus together. Garance and I arrived together and eventually we became the only two residents of Kyobancha house, and partners in crime (unable to say no to any side-quest suggestions). Living in close quarters with my co-interns and assistant managers has been so much fun, and I can’t quite tell if they have kept me sane, or if we are all becoming insane together (I blame Katrina), either way I am having the best time and my heart is full knowing I have made some friends for life.
One of the coolest things about this place is that everyone is such a tea nerd on their own unique journey. Each person has their own story, which is so special to learn about and be a part of. I really appreciate how Obubu supports and nurtures diversity and individuality, and it is the perfect balance of chaotic and structured to support my creative inspiration. Each day offered the opportunity to learn something new – tea tour guests would ask questions you hadn’t considered yourself, different staff members will answer with slightly different directions on the common questions, so you could learn so much from so many different perspectives. And with enough personal curiosity to dig deeper, you could learn so much more beyond the essentials of the internship.
I have learned things that you can’t get from a book, or a video, or from stories. You really do need this first-hand immersion if you are looking to work with tea. Before coming here, I had basic knowledge of different types of Japanese tea, such as genmaicha, houjicha, mugicha etc, but I didn’t know, for example, what a shaded tea was nor its flavour profile, and could not quite make sense of brewing sencha properly beyond the fact that the water shouldn’t be boiling. Now I feel more confident to brew and discuss a broader scope of Japanese teas, with the foundations to explore them in my own way too. My chakabuki score improved from ranking practically last with a score of 5 in the first instance coming second place with a score of 14 in the next – it’s a small win and testament to my improvement on understanding subtle differences in sencha profiles!
I got to know different types of tea further and work on my design and pixel animation skills through my personal project [link to blog], which was a tea selection quiz in collaboration with Zehra. I also explored the vibe of each tea through music by creating playlists for each tea. Music has been a strong part of my time at Obubu, with the late night factory dance parties, karaoke and curating the playlist for Jackie’s pop-up event ‘Of this Place’, in which I focussed on reflecting the vibe of life in Wazuka and at Obubu.
Living in Wazuka feels like a dream, the landscape is stunning, whatever the weather. Combine the goodness of tea whilst being surrounded by mountains, tea fields and rice fields, my brain chemistry and inspiration is at an all time high.
As for my most memorable moments of the internship, there are too many for me to choose my favourite or go into any depth, but a special shoutout to the factory dance parties, the smell of freshly harvested spring tea leaves, tea field picnics, movie nights, endless everyday tea drinking, chakabuki, facemasks, goblins, mochi pounding, pottery making, frogs, fireworks, Patricia, muscle flexing, hand rolling, black tea making, and late night processing. I won’t go into any further details, but enjoy this collage to illustrate the good times:
Before coming here, the one thing I was most nervous about surviving the elements of nature i.e. the heat and humidity, and the creepy crawlies. In reality, amidst the fun and excitement, this really never became an issue (the weather has been tough since the end of June though!). I generally find cool looking bugs quite fascinating, and don’t mind them, but what I am quite proud of is that my relationship with spiders, my once sworn enemy, has softened. They are really beautiful here and spin some snazzy webs – my friends and family back at home are surprised by the number of photos of spiders appearing on my instagram stories. My true love, though, is frogs, and I was so happy that they are in abundance around here and I had some cute encounters with them (very sorry to Nicole for the one that I saved from the car wing mirror which then peed on her during a tea tour), I also enjoyed the sound of them singing together in the rice field outside the factory every night.
I had 3 main goals for the internship. (1) Learn at least enough that I no longer feel like an imposter and can set myself up to work with tea. (2) Build relationships within the Japanese tea community that are meaningful and (hopefully) long lasting. And finally (3) have fun. I’m pleased that all of these goals were met, along with so much more I couldn’t have predicted. The path ahead of me is much clearer now, and I’m feeling super inspired to continue on my tea quest.
I am excited about sharing what I have learned back in the UK. Firstly with my family and friends, to level up the daily tea drinking. And secondly in a professional capacity, through workshops, pop-ups and collaborations with artists, such as pottery makers and musicians, to educate and explore Japanese tea in creative spaces. It has always been my goal to work in a way that I can return to Japan regularly, so I will continue exploring tea, and of course I look forward to my next return to Obubu. As I work on improving my Japanese language, my ultimate aim is to be a bridge for Japanese tea between Japan and the UK.
I am so pleased to have taken the leap to take this experience, it is what I hoped for and more, and has given me a new sense or purpose and direction for the future. I don’t have the space to mention everyone, but I love and appreciate you all for all the core memories that have been unlocked ~ big love Obubu, またね!