A visit to Yusando Farm, part one and two.
Most journeys in Japan begin the same way, navigating a transport system so precise, so layered, that it asks something of you before you've even arrived. It asks you to slow down. To read the moment, not rush past it. Sometimes the only thing to do is pause and take a deep breath.
My journey began in Nagoya.
The train pulled away from the city and the landscape began to tell its own story, towns drifting past the window, each one different from the last. No two the same. I thought about the tea fields I was moving toward, how natural tea growing carries its own imperfections, shaped entirely by the land around it. The environment is the master. The train felt the same. It was weaving through that truth.
The ascent into the mountains was where the day began to announce itself. Up through the forest and down again through the valleys, the landscape pressed itself against the glass, ancient and generous and unhurried. By the time the train pulled into Haibara, I already knew. Today was going to be something.
Waiting at Haibara was Jeff. An American who somewhere along the way found his life had quietly re rooted itself into Japanese soil, and now his hands work the tea fields. He greeted me with the ease of a person who has made peace with where they are.
I was, I'll admit, naive about what came next. I had imagined a short journey to a nearby farm. What Jeff gently revealed instead was the full scale of what Yusando has become, farms stretching across the region, a landscape of rolling cultivation that takes your breath in an entirely different way to the mountains. We stopped at the factory to gather what we needed, then made our way through the mountains to Wazuka, a town I now know by name and by feeling.
The road ducked and weaved as roads through Japanese mountains do, deliberate, almost choreographed, and then we arrived. The first farm Yusando ever purchased. Surrounded by small houses, no bigger than a playground. And yet there was something about it, an intimacy, a sense of origin, that the larger fields don't carry in quite the same way. This is where it started. You could feel that.
The crew was already in the fields when we arrived, harvesting tencha, the leaves that will one day become matcha. Not many words were being spoken. None were needed. These were people who knew their purpose and loved it, and that kind of knowing hums in the air around those who carry it.
Ryitora, the owner, came to greet us. Tall, warm, a smile that arrived before he did. You could see in him the depth that comes from building something slowly, honestly, over years. Jeff guided me across the field, explaining something I hadn't understood before, that drying the leaves is where the harvest is won or lost. There is no shortcut in this. The plant has already done its part. Now it is your turn to honour it.
And then we harvested.
There is something quietly profound about putting your hands into that process. Yusando works alongside people with disability, and on this day every person in that field had a role. Every pair of hands mattered. It struck me as deeply aligned with the philosophy of the farm itself, natural farming sees the environment as it is, works with it rather than against it, and finds the dignity in what is already there. These people were not additions to the process. They were part of it. As they have always been.
It was the kind of moment that doesn't announce itself as significant while it's happening. You only understand it later, lying still, in a 150 year old house, listening to the silence and the birds.
After the harvest we drove to the factory, the tencha loaded and ready. In Japan, things run as they are meant to run. The process receives the harvest, and the harvest becomes something greater. Everything in its right place.
This was only the beginning of the day.
The Celebration
After the harvest, the day exhaled.
There is a particular kind of joy that follows honest work, not the loud kind, but the settled kind. The kind that finds a seat at a table and doesn't rush. After the fields, after the tencha was gathered and the morning had given everything it had, the Yusando crew led us to their place of celebration. A traditional restaurant they return to after every harvest. A ritual dressed as a lunch.
Vincent, who has spent three years quietly learning Japan from the inside, leaned over and told me how to approach the meal. Not instructions, more an offering. This is how it's done here. And he was right. In the western world a meal is a destination, something to finish, to clear, to move past. Here it is the journey itself. Small portions. A little of everything. Slow bites between slower conversation. Like growing tea, the table asks you to take your time. To let the moment steep.
After lunch, we made our way to the factory with Ryitora and Axel, who deserves a paragraph all of his own. Axel's knowledge of tea is something rare. It is not performed or guarded, it is simply present, offered freely, without hierarchy. A man who has found deep respect for something and wants you to find it too. No judgement. No ego. A true gentleman. To learn from someone like that is a gift.
At the factory, we dropped off the supplies from the day, and Ryitora showed us something closer to his heart, a fermented tea he'd been quietly experimenting with, blended with Chinese tea, a kind of science tucked inside tradition. Axel and Vincent huddled over it, smelling, talking, listening. A true art to watch and learn.
From there, Ryitora took us to where we'd stay the night. From the outside, you could already tell it was old, and when I asked Axel what it was like inside, he wouldn't describe it. Just walk in and see, he said. We passed through where they're building the cafe, and then the door opened onto the garden, and my mouth dropped. A 150 year old house with a garden kept so meticulously it felt like a quiet testament to everything Japanese culture holds dear. Inside, every corner held something different, the architecture in the ceilings, the lamps, the small imperfections that made the whole place feel earned rather than staged. We set up the rooms for ourselves and for the Taiwanese guests who'd be arriving soon.
Ryitora then showed me how tencha becomes matcha by hand. A slow, almost mathematical process, in an hour, only forty grams are ground. Forty grams, after all of that. It tells you everything about the time and care this work actually takes.
This is where tea began, and where Adventcha's story starts too.
