Photo/Illutration A group of tourists walk around a tea field with a view of Mount Fuji in Fuji city, Shizuoka Prefecture, in April 2018. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

The pleasures of traveling on the Tokaido Shinkansen go beyond admiring Mount Fuji from the train window.

In this season of new tea leaves, the tea field ridges in Shizuoka Prefecture are deep green and beautiful, with the new buds of yellowish green having been picked.

You also notice black ridges here and there. What are they?

I visited the prefecture's tea industry research center in the city of Kikugawa and learned that black cloth covered the ridges where raw materials for "matcha" (powdered green tea) are grown.

"Matcha is extensively used, including in confectioneries," explained Eiji Kobayashi, 57, the center's director. "The demand for matcha has grown, which is also owed to recent changes in how tea is drunk."

With diminished occasions today for brewing tea in teapots, the per-household purchase volume of tea leaves has plummeted to one-third of the peak era.

Back then, Shizuoka Prefecture accounted for half the nationwide tea production. But Kagoshima Prefecture, now a prominent producer of materials for bottled tea, has rapidly caught up. The two prefectures have been competing neck and neck since a few years ago.

This has made Shizuoka Prefecture aware that concentrating solely on high-grade tea leaves will not enable it to remain in the lead. The prefecture is now paying greater attention to meeting corporate demand as well as to growing tea leaves for processing.

Kobayashi is a prefectural employee and tea farmer.

"There is nothing better than the season's first-picked tea that's brewed in a teapot," he said. "But even my own kids rarely use a teapot nowadays. In this day and age, you have to try new things, like tapping overseas markets."

Until I was assigned to my first post in Shizuoka Prefecture as a reporter, I thought nothing of pouring boiling water over tea leaves. But a senior colleague at a local TV station taught me one day: "Let the hot water cool slightly, wait for the tea leaves to open (in the teapot), and pour the tea until the last drop."

In a corner of the press room, I was stunned by the rich sweetness of the brew.

Haiku poet Shugyo Takaha penned a piece to the effect, "Two drops, one drop and then one drop of new tea."

Bottled tea is nice and convenient, but when you want a relaxing morning, nothing beats a fresh-brewed pot of tea.

Your whole body becomes steeped in the "composite art" of the sun, water and the earth.

--The Asahi Shimbun, May 20

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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