Everyone I’ve talked to about Obubu says that this place changes people. I can’t really tell if I’ve personally changed much in my time here, but I can say that Obubu has woken up dormant aspects of myself that I aim to mold my life around going forward. This experience also made me realize that the mythology of my life that I’ve built over time is perhaps a bit off.
You see, I expected to have negative feelings about the physical effort of farming -– that I’d need to remind myself often that the pursuit of tea knowledge was worth the effort. I grew up on a small family farm in the rural southern United States and vowed when I left for university that I’d never live outside a city or do manual labor again.
I now believe that until now I just never had the chance to farm a crop I cared about or experience a countryside that captured my imagination as thoroughly as Wazuka.
Sencha found me at a time when I needed something concrete to anchor me to the present. I started a morning tea ritual and made a point to use all my senses. I’d observe the leaf color and shape, feel the texture, listen closely to the sounds of pouring water, smell both leaf and liquor, and finally taste the result. I enjoy documenting basically everything and happen to have a taste for the analog, so naturally I took written notes too. Communing with tea on a daily basis fueled my interest in these delicious leaves, to the point where I wanted to learn as much as possible and pass that knowledge on to others. This is what ultimately brought me to Obubu.
And once I started farming, I couldn’t get enough.
Harvesting sencha was fun but stressful because I wanted to do my part to make the best tea possible. Lugging heavy bags of harvested tea to the nearest shaded spot was a mission to slow down oxidation. Weeding was a war of attrition against bamboo interlopers and vines trying to choke precious tea plants — a war I’d gladly wage soaking wet in the rain when my ostensibly waterproof gear soaked through. (Seriously, if you intern at Obubu during a rainy season be sure to bring good waterproof gear.) Any time the work felt like too much I could turn around, look out over the tea bushes from above, soak in a breathtaking green mountain of precisely shaped rows, and feel grounded enough to get back to it. Part of this feeling was from simply being outdoors in a beautiful place; the rest was about the tea itself.
I was at Obubu for the spring harvest, which meant my intern slot also participated in factory shifts that ran from 1 PM to 10 PM. On days I had an evening shift, I felt torn between the suspicion that I should really get some sleep and curiosity about tea processing. Most of the time, curiosity won. I stayed up well past the end of my shift to see the tea through to packaging time. The best part was that I wasn’t the only one: Katrina or Garance were likely to be around too, checking the tea with Akky-san and learning more about processing through observation and practice. I’m so grateful to them for showing me how to catch leaves in the shaping machine and patiently answering my questions.
As I write this, my mind travels back to the first processing night of my internship. It wasn’t even my shift, but it was the first spring harvest so everyone stayed awake as long as they could. I’ll never forget my first time seeing all the machines of a sencha factory running at the same time or the smell of the tea as it moved through the pipeline to become a shelf-stable product. I’ll admit I cried. I’m crying a little bit now. That night was festive yet poignant, bringing with it an internal shift that I couldn’t put words to at the time. Between the tea and the joyful people around me, I was just so completely and utterly enthralled that I didn’t want to blink for fear I’d miss something.
Naturally, I was up with the group that made it to the end to try the first sencha of the year. The flavor was humble, quiet, and very fresh…like it was waiting to wake up to its true potential flavor after a little time to settle into itself.
Maybe the same has been happening to me over the last three months. I came here fresh yet with a hint of what I might become. And I’ve been settling into myself little by little this whole time without even knowing.
It started on day one in Miwako-san’s orientation presentation. She issued a call to action: to “do it now” instead of waiting when you want something to happen. I didn’t know what I wanted to do yet, but I did feel inspired to do something. In little ways – a karaoke night in the Obubu cafe here, some chore organization there – I tried to start acting instead of waiting. And I often found someone else who also wanted the same thing I did, which made achieving goals even easier. When my fellow spring interns and I wanted to do something fun to welcome the incoming summer class, David came through to help us get a pizza night off the ground. We just had to start looking for a way, and he was there to enthusiastically support us.
My intern group has really supported each other, too. I can’t imagine the Obubu experience without them. In fact, most of us are sitting at a table together as I write this part because someone in the group chat asked if anyone wanted to get some work done tonight. Some of us are writing, others are studying for our upcoming Japanese Tea Basics exam, and the rest are simply winding down in their own way but still present for solidarity. It feels like college all over again in a good way: a time of discovery and growth.
Everyone at Obubu has helped me dust off my adventurous streak, remember that it’s ok to take time for myself, just say yes to things, and dream a little more freely. We’ve laughed together, cried together, and gotten through a really intense farming season together. I know we have to go our separate ways soon, I believe many of us will come back together again.
While farming and friendship were definitely highlights of this program, they weren’t the only opportunities to learn. Between working tea tours and cafe shifts, I got a crash course in hospitality here that will inform my future plans. I applied to Obubu with the goal to bring the knowledge I learn here home to teach people in the US about Japanese tea through classes and experiences. Fortunately, Obubu confirmed my enthusiasm for teaching and showed me I can handle all the dishes my future students might generate at a tea tasting. 😂
My internship project also gave me the opportunity to contribute to Obubu’s longer-term vision. Sencha is my favorite tea, so when a project called “sencha promotion” appeared in a list of potential internship projects I was very intrigued. I worked with Marusya, Obubu’s social media and marketing lead, to research why tea drinkers in the US like tea. The main goal was to better understand where folks learn about sencha (if at all) and how sencha might fit into their lives. You can read more about that in a blog post, but I will say it was interesting and heartwarming to learn what connects people to tea. I can’t wait to see how Marusya and others will use the results to share Japanese tea even further.
I came to Obubu passionate about bringing Japanese tea to the world, and the internship fanned the flames. But I also feel humbled by my hands-on experience and the journeys of tea people I connected with here. There’s still so much I don’t know about the world of tea; now I don’t think I’ll be satisfied unless I find ways to keep learning while I teach.
If you want to follow along with my tea adventures after Obubu, you can find me on Instagram as @jenndrinkstea. Feel free to say hello!
