A Year in the Life of Wazuka Tea Farming

It is hard to believe that it has been a year since Tokyo Weekender wrote an article about the tea picking tour we were starting soon. As planned, we launched this tour and, in the past year, we have welcomed visitors from all over the world - from far flung places like Australia, Hong Kong, Germany, South Africa, and the United States, and from close to home - Kyoto, Nara, and Osaka.

Beyond this, d:matcha has made a lot of changes in the past year. In the cafe, we expanded our seating space and added a window in the back that looks out at the beautiful tea fields on Mt. Kamatsuka.

Based on feedback from our tea picking tour, we have expanded our tours and experiences so each person can enjoy what most interested them. We now offer a tour of a tea factory so you can learn about the process of creating great tea from fresh tea leaves. Additionally, we offer a tour through Wazuka’s winding streets lined with traditional Japanese houses to visit hidden historic sites and temples. We still continue to offer other opportunities, like tasting a sample of our distinct, single-origin tea varieties and learning how to hand-grind and whisk your own cup of matcha.

In June of this year, we were very excited to open our first overseas cafe in Cebu, Philippines. Located in the Robinsons Galleria Cebu, this cafe is offering authentic Japanese tea and treats while also adding products created specifically to suit local taste preferences.

Over the past year, we have added to the teas and treats that we offer, both in our cafe and on our website. Two of these new treats are our assorted tea cookies and our matcha chocolate set. Our all-natural tea cookies are made in house and are available in four flavors: matcha, houjicha, black tea, and yuzu. Made with ceremonial grade matcha, our matcha chocolate set offers a wide-range of tea-infused chocolates containing from 3% to 24% matcha per chocolate plus a houjicha variety.

There have been many more changes, too many to list here. We are looking forward to continuing to change and grow in the year to come. Stay tuned and hope to see you at one of our cafes soon. We wish you all the best in the new year!