Visiting Uji city Kyoto Japan

Uji city is located southern Kyoto and it is renowned for the best Japanese teas called Uji cha (Uji tea). My parents live in the northern part of Kyoto and it takes approx 1 hour to get Uji by bus and train. Even if it is close, I never really visited Uji except visiting my friend who lives there. It was a good opportunity to meet our supplier of Matcha and Sencha green tea.

When you arrive at the station Uji (Keihan line), you will see a bridge and river. Then you start seeing some shops selling green tea and Matcha. My favorite is Matcha sweets and Ice-cream. There is also a world heritage temple Byoudouin at the same place and in the street leading to Byoudouin, you will find many shops and restaurants offering food with Matcha. It was funny to find Matcha soba, Matcha beer, Matcha dumpling, Matcha ramen and Matcha takoyaki!

Uji cha (Uji tea) is grown in 4 prefectures, Kyoto, Mie, Nara and Shiga, and is processed by manufacturers in Kyoto using original Uji method.

In order to grow fine tea, it’s very important to have rich soil and pure water and where Uji cha (Uji tea) is grown there are both Uji and Kuzu rivers and it rains more than 1500mm every year. Also the very steep valleys create great temperature differences between day and night, resulting in fog, which prevents frost the biggest enemy of tea leaf buds. In addition the soil has the unique ability to drain the perfect amount of rainwater for growing tea.

I asked my supplier if I could see tea farm and he was kind enough to take us to take photos by car. He told us that the color of leaves won’t be so vibrant green at the moment but it was still nice to see the leaves growing in the cold weather.

We also tried Matcha tasting and sweets at the shop of supplier where a kind clerk show us how to make Matcha with chasen (bamboo whisk) and chasyaku (bamboo scoop). It was indeed nice experience