Hello everyone!
My name is Garance (Gahonceee) and I am intern #199 here at Obubu. Spring batch from April to July :)
If you ask anyone here at Obubu, I hate dates. I do not like making plans in advance, I don’t like planning in general. Specific times or any future commitment make me anxious. And for some reason, that I still cannot explain, I decided quite quickly on a Tea Calendar for my project idea. (So spending the next two months of my internship looking at dates…)
This idea came to me as I was looking at important seasons, days and, events regarding tea and could not find a source that was first of all, exhaustive and second not in Japanese. I did stumble on tea advent calendars (I had bought one the previous year :)) and the Global Japanese Tea Association website. While looking at the events section, I found information about tea festivals. Wait–there are tea festivals?!
As I was trying to find the time and place for the next one, Chihiro (#190), who was sitting behind me in the office, stood up–“I am going to the Yoshidayama Tea Festival in Kyoto, do you want to go together?” Absolutely, I wanted to. I ended up going to both days and had the best time. Chi-chan did stay longer than I did, a true tea addict going from stand to stand, tasting absolutely every tea out there. While butterflying from one tea farmer to another we bumped into the entirety of the Obubu staff, comparing our purchases and realizing a lot were the same :)
Also, I remembered our first week at Obubu. We had attended the hand-picking and hand-rolling event for Hachiju-hachiya, the 88th day of Spring according to the traditional Japanese calendar. This date has been regarded as the best day to start the spring harvest in Japan (falls usually on May 1st or 2nd). This day felt very special; it is said that drinking tea on/from this day will bring you prosperity and health! It was quickly followed by our first processing night (aka factory party), “this is craaaaazy” – Mari (assistant manager #11) seeing for the first time the machines in full motion.
Those wonderful experiences and the wish for a centralized place where all these little info pieces about tea (tea dates/festivals/harvest seasons/etc) brought me to my project! As a forever-lover of side-quests, this was also a way for me to channel my interest for all these different aspects of the tea world into one useful tool.
First of all, I asked myself, is there a Tea Day? And luckily enough it was coming up very soon; May 21st is International Tea Day. I then found out about Matcha Day, National Tea Day in Japan, Iced Tea Day and plenty others! I made the decision to include Japanese tea dates (and some extras :)) as I discovered that the Chinese Tea Calendar is a whole other world in itself–tightly related to health.
Wouldn’t it be nice also to have a calendar that would tell you which tea to drink every week?
This very nice idea costed me a ridiculous amount of time and energy but was one of the most fulfilling parts of my project. I got to find out about all the teas Obubu carries (it also became a way to showcase our products in a fun manner). The detail-oriented person that I am took over for that process. The tea for each week is related to the season, their harvest time, an important tea date they have a link with (e.g. Matcha Day), when the drinker would enjoy them the most (e.g. darker teas and brews in the winter) and so on… In order to present the tea, I included the name, photo half/half respectively of the brewed infusion and the tea leaves, a short description, and finally, selected characteristics:
- taste
- body
- length
- harvest
- cultivar
- cultivation
I must thank the Obubu staff for that section (George-san, Pau-san, and anyone else that was in charge of the pictures, description and characteristics of each tea). I merely summarized and re-transcribed all of the info from the product section on the website as it was crystal clear and much more expertly done than I could have.
Example of two of the teas of the week:
As I was doing a Japanese tea calendar, I also researched traditional Japanese seasons. This is when Pau-san popped his head on the left of his computer and asked me: “do you know about the 72 micro-seasons of Japan”? …No really, should I do one tea per micro season? Okay – maybe let’s stick to the tea of the week. Although, through some further exploration, I noted that a few of them were related to tea harvesting and decided to include these in my calendar.
Example of micro-season
At this point of my project, I liked the direction but felt a bit frustrated; I felt I had so much more knowledge I wanted to share–what about tea facts? Every month could include a little piece of knowledge on the tea world. I looked at the important events, special teas or anything that would happen during the month that I wanted to go a bit more in depth. Tea facts were born :)
Example of tea fact
So now we have tea dates, tea facts, tea descriptions, tea seasons, what is left? Again, more stuff that I wanted to include but could not fit in the small tea fact boxes… Whilst talking to my sister an idea came up: a special page dedicated to a specific tea-related topic that stood out to me during my internship. I immediately knew what I wanted to showcase: intern project/activities and processing! Four pages for four season, one being tea festivals :))
(Finally, all the background pictures are from Obubu interns/staff–thank you George for the first page!)
I guess this project has made love calendars more than I ever expected. For the year 2026, the anticipation of a certain day, week or month will now be for me, tea lovers and date-haters positive and joyful rather than stressful.
Seasons and the weather they bring with them are at the center of tea farming. You cannot fight against them, you just have to follow their timing and be grateful for what they offer:
The heavy summer rain, the fresh spring buds and the beautiful golden light!
Thank you to everyone who was directly or indirectly involved in the making of this Japanese Tea Calendar! Hope this brings more tea and more happiness into your year 2026!