Foreword
Early in 2020 we had the pleasure of welcoming Ryuiti Izawa, a Japanese Masters Student, who studies tea at Shizuoka university. We are all so glad we were able to meet him and learn more about the details of tea genetics and diversity within it. He has written this blog post about his time at Obubu and we wanted to share it with you all! I hope you enjoy!
– George
Bygone days at Obubu tea garden.
In my life, I went go so much tea café and shop as a guest. and, I love tea rather than other drink since Junior high school student. but I’m not satisfied by them. I wanna get experience about tea as a job. Especially for trading and promoting Japanese tea. but there is so little chance to get the job of Japanese tea makers even native Japanese because of the depression. At such time, I finally get the information about the internship of a company. It’s Obubu. So, I thought it’s the last chance and decide to take part in them. The internship at the Obubu tea garden for two weeks. It was very very short time for me, but I spent so grateful time that changed my life forever.
It was my first surprise at Obubu that the language barrier was easier than I expected. I was born in Japan and never go abroad. Saying in an exaggerated manner, It’s the first time for me to talk people from other countries face to face. but, the members of Obubu and even tourist guest earnestly listened to my humble English and I can understand more their conversation than I expected. It’s a nice surprise.
The second surprise was that there’s much more tea lovers in the world than I thought. If I hadn’t taken part in the Obubu internship, I wouldn’t have met them and made connection, not to mention overseas friends, even Japanese ones.
Without the jokes, I think the god of green tea showed me the way to carve out a career for myself by taking part in the Obubu internship.
- Ryuiti Izawa