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Notes at Origin: Nishio, Aichi · Specialty Matcha Podcast

0:07
Hello and welcome to the specialty much podcast.
0:09
My name is Brian. This is my Coho Zhongjian who
0:11
also goes by Sam Hello and with Co founders of Sanko Macho
0:15
products. Yeah, we launched this podcast
0:17
to discuss our learning journey, Macho, share startup stories and
0:20
interview experts. Speaking of startup stories,
0:22
Sam, how's it going? I'm here in France, you're there
0:25
in China getting this meal over the finish line.
0:29
We've had a couple delays and you know, we've been working
0:31
through all sorts of problems. How's it feel on that side?
0:35
How's it all shaping up? Yeah.
0:36
We've been working very diligently with our partners in
0:40
Guangzhou and Shenzhen and Dongguan and Zhongshan, in fact
0:45
with 28 different suppliers on all of these components.
0:49
And we are trying our best to put everything together.
0:52
And it's very close to the finish line has been raining in
0:56
Guangzhou quite a bit in the past two days.
0:58
I saw some district in which is the neighborhood in Guangzhou
1:03
has become a river. There were literally cars
1:06
flowing in the river. Yeah, I missed the sunny and dry
1:09
days in the Aichi. Well, I wish I was there.
1:13
We were there together about two weeks ago.
1:15
I'm working on the mill and getting to sample and mill a
1:19
bunch of different teas and we've got all sorts of learnings
1:22
which we can't wait to share with everyone once we get these
1:25
mills out to all the beta program users.
1:27
But there's some really interesting flavor
1:30
transformation that happens with different parameters and we're
1:34
learning a lot about different milling speeds, like some very
1:38
non intuitive factors that can lead to a mill milling T faster
1:44
or slower that we didn't quite expect.
1:47
Yeah, and also with different teas too.
1:49
It impacts the milling speed, the output speed, the quantity
1:53
and also the flavor and also the flavor degradation, which is
1:58
very interesting. Yeah, we were talking with
2:01
someone who was using some culinary applications of Sencha
2:06
to make to make ice cream, and apparently they were milling it.
2:09
And after three or four days after it was milled, it had lost
2:14
a lot of vitality. But on day one after milling, if
2:17
you used it immediately in that application, it was like really
2:20
expressive and aromatic, which was really validating for us to
2:25
hear because we've been milling a lot of Gokoro just because
2:29
that it tastes good, but it doesn't taste that good after
2:33
like a week. And it was super interesting and
2:35
validating to hear that just off the mill they had had a similar
2:39
experience. Yeah, it's really matches with
2:42
our experience and I bet you know it's probably has any
2:46
something to do with the whole rolling process with Gokoro and
2:50
Sencha versus Tensha which doesn't get rolled after it's
2:54
processed. There's must be some like
2:57
breakage of cell wall that release some certain compounds
3:01
that doesn't age well. Yeah.
3:04
Or doesn't age well after milling because like the
3:07
difference between a fresh milled Gokro and even like one
3:11
week old one is enormous. It's like a four point lower in
3:15
quality on our seven point scale in my opinion.
3:18
Like, it's still tasty, it's still interesting, but it
3:21
doesn't have that richness that it can have right off the mill.
3:25
The avocado creaminess, like some hints of olive oil, like
3:30
all of those wonderful flavors that we experienced from milling
3:34
one of the, you know, pretty high end go curl from Uchi just
3:38
vanished after a week. We were like so excited to share
3:43
this Gokro powder to some of our friends and then we whisked the,
3:47
you know, the tea powder and we sat down and we drink together
3:50
and we were like. It's decent, but lean, much more
3:56
vegetable, much more asparagus Y pretty quickly, which just
4:01
wasn't in the cup at first. And then of course we've been
4:04
milling a lot of different tension and just the how
4:07
moisture and humidity can affect tension.
4:10
The the quality of the milled matcha, but also the speed,
4:14
which it's milled is a, there's a enormous variance, actually
4:19
almost a 2X variance for some tension versus others.
4:23
It's the same mill parameters, same pressure, same mill speed.
4:27
And there's a much larger variance now that we have access
4:31
to a much larger variety of tension to test on the smell.
4:36
Yeah, so and this sorts of interesting learnings.
4:39
And that's really just, you know, a small fraction of all
4:42
the experiment that could be done with this milk platform.
4:46
So really cannot wait to release all these machines out into the
4:50
world and let everybody test. Absolutely.
4:53
We've been, we're so close to the finish line, we can almost
4:56
taste it. We are tasting it.
4:58
It's been it's been quite the journey getting these out the
5:00
door and really owe you a huge thanks to managing all these
5:05
dependencies and complexities in China.
5:08
It's thank you. We really found the words best
5:13
partner on that too. But let's not pat our shoulders
5:16
too quickly. We can save the champagne time
5:19
when we officially get out of this machine to people's.
5:22
Head, yes, let's do it. Yeah.
5:24
So we learned quite a bit when we were in Nishio and as well as
5:28
our last day in Toyota. Yeah, has been really, I will
5:33
say eye opening trip for us in a sense.
5:36
This is actually the first time we see some Tentra facilities
5:40
actually running with teeth, which is a little bit incredible
5:43
since we've been talking about it for so long.
5:45
But it's also like really magical to be in those
5:48
facilities seeing everything running and seeing the tensure
5:52
being processed in real time and smell, you know, different
5:56
tensions. That's fresh off the open but
5:58
was incredible. And feeling the radiant heat and
6:02
just the level of processing that's going on inside these
6:05
tensure factories and the taste and the smell.
6:09
And it's interesting every time we go into one of these
6:11
factories, we were in one initio and the factory operators, it's,
6:14
I don't know why, but they was like almost push it on you to
6:18
taste the Ara tensha or like the fresh.
6:22
They're almost like tensha chips, leafy chips coming off,
6:25
and they want you to taste it and chew it.
6:27
And they taste pretty good. On us, Mommy.
6:29
Yeah, they're so good. I would totally buy like a bag
6:33
of 10 shot chips from like a company if that's available.
6:36
Me too. I think it's actually very
6:38
under. You can talk about matcha
6:40
shortage, but I think it's a pretty underutilized thing or
6:43
utilizing this because I know what I think it's in Burmese
6:47
cuisine in Myanmar and they have these fermented tea salads.
6:50
But other than that, feels like cooking with tea is a pretty
6:53
underutilized thing. We heard, we've had, what was
6:56
it, some oolong chicken and Dong Ding in Taiwan.
7:00
But for the most part, you know, people don't use it enough in
7:03
like savory applications I think.
7:05
Yeah, actually they put these tensile fragments into onigiri,
7:10
which was very. That's right.
7:12
They have their special version of these tea onigiri's that we
7:16
got to try with Tensha and it does give a little umami and
7:19
some freshness. Pretty good.
7:20
Yeah, yeah. And you can buy them too if
7:23
you're in, if you're happen to be in Toyota or in Nishio,
7:27
there's actually a shocking amount of tensha for sale.
7:30
And it's tensha specifically for these Onigiri's.
7:33
It's typically outrageously expensive when you really
7:36
calculate the cost per gram, but it's, you know, it's kind of
7:39
fun. Yeah, it's kind of fun.
7:41
And we also have these Tenta fragment salt that you can use,
7:47
I guess to season your food. But people are pretty creative.
7:51
Very creative. So Speaking of creativity, we
7:53
also learned of a very interesting type of pest control
7:56
that doesn't involve like chemical pesticides that some
8:00
farmers are doing in Aichi and Sam.
8:03
You were telling me that you've actually heard of this type of
8:05
pest control? Not in the tea context, but some
8:08
Chinese farmers also use this as well.
8:10
Yeah, it's very specific type of machine oil that people will
8:16
dilute that into a very thin solution and that's sprayed onto
8:21
the vegetations. And what he basically does is
8:24
that it kind of dissolves the insects outer exoskeleton wax,
8:29
which kind of disabled the insects ability to breathe and
8:33
that acts as a pest control, which we saw that in in IT too.
8:38
Yeah, they diluted apparently one to 100 and the farmer
8:42
literally held up a gigantic like 5 gallon can of machine
8:47
oil, like lubricant or something you would run through an engine.
8:52
It was kind of shocking. But yeah, it's better than
8:55
applying, you know, these whatever these chemicals are
8:58
that people are typically doing. The other thing that we learned
9:01
about were different types of tensha ovens.
9:04
So something we've talked about here before and it's like widely
9:08
reported on is the Hori style tensha oven.
9:11
But the Aichi farmers have their own style called Mikawa style
9:19
tensha oven, which was actually developed at a very similar time
9:23
as the Hori style kiln in about exactly 100 years ago in the
9:27
1920s when there was this move from Tensha producers from
9:31
entirely hand processed tea hand processing of tensha to more
9:38
mechanical versions. To my knowledge, I don't think
9:41
anyone is still hand processing tensha in Japan.
9:44
Like at some point the tea hits a conveyor belt where it's not
9:47
just like entirely hand processed batches handpicked,
9:51
yes, but hand processed I've never heard of.
9:54
So it seems like that move to automation happened.
9:57
Is is only about 100 years old. And something they have both in
10:00
common is that they both are very radiant heat tension ovens.
10:04
And so not only is it drying the leaf, but it's also creating a
10:07
lot of flavor development through my art Browning reaction
10:11
with all this radiant heat in these red brick ovens.
10:14
So what's the difference between a holly oven versus a Mikawa?
10:19
So we have a big table, The Hori 1 Hori style, which was
10:24
developed in Uji from an ancestor of Horatio Shimayan,
10:27
was known to be more of a combination of radiant heat and
10:32
convection heat. And the Mikawa, at least in this
10:36
table that we're looking at, doesn't really talk much about
10:39
convection. It's much more about radiant
10:43
heat than about airflow. Yeah.
10:45
So all of these elements have some slight differences in terms
10:50
of designed and choices, but they more or less have a very
10:55
similar structure. But for these Mikawa style open,
10:59
usually the hottest temperature is around 150 to 160°C.
11:05
And for one of the factory we we visited, it was specifically set
11:09
to be 167°, which was a very precise number that they that
11:14
they decide to do. And on top of these ovens, you
11:17
have these small fence that you can opened to kind of vent out
11:22
the moisture from the 10s are being processed, which we kind
11:27
of experienced that difficulty when we were trying to roast
11:30
some tensile in Chima when we were doing our little tensile
11:34
cultivation experiment in China. All of these tea getting roasted
11:38
in these open generates a lot of moisture, a lot of steam.
11:42
So if you don't vent out these steam quickly or these moisture
11:46
quickly, the tea basically end up getting steamed again of it,
11:50
which is not desirable. Yeah, something that they were
11:53
mentioning too is it, it's hard to cross compare tension oven
11:57
temperatures because the temperature probe are different
12:01
places. So it was they warned against
12:04
too much cross comparison of the exact tension temperature.
12:08
It seems like these are really bespoke things like these, like
12:12
with the Hori style and the Mikawa style like it.
12:16
It seems like you kind of like learn the personality of the
12:19
Tenta oven and then optimize for it.
12:22
The other thing too is that they're all gas powered or like
12:25
crude oil powered and you can actually see the flame burning.
12:29
One thing is it's just so energy intensive to heat up.
12:33
So typically I we've heard this with the Hori style kilns, but
12:36
apparently the Mikawa style kilns and Aichi as well, is that
12:39
once you start them, you don't stop.
12:42
And because it takes so much energy to get it hot and then
12:45
you just run it continuously for the whole season.
12:48
But it's very energy intensive. Matcha is just so energy
12:52
intensive, like even feeling this room like generating that
12:56
much steam. These tension ovens are
12:59
extremely energy intensive, especially the old school ones,
13:04
these red brick ones, both the Hori style and the Mikawa style,
13:08
and then all the CCU Sue milling and all of this cold storage.
13:12
When you think about all their types of tea processing, I
13:15
cannot think of one that requires more energy and more
13:20
cost to the energy than matcha. Both across like the steam, the
13:25
Tensha oven and the milling and then all the refrigeration that
13:29
needs to happen afterwards. It's really mind boggling amount
13:33
of energy compared to other types of tea when you think
13:35
about it. Yeah, that's why it's so
13:37
expensive. Not to mention all the hard work
13:40
that it takes. So at this table, it's comparing
13:43
and contrasting Mikawa and Hori style and they say the heat
13:46
concept. So for Mikawa, the one in Aichi,
13:49
it's a stable drying with heat stored and brick and far
13:53
infrared radiant heat. In the Mikawa region, this
13:56
became part of local identity of matcha production.
13:59
Whereas the Hori style from Uji uses strong radiant heat closer
14:04
to the fire source and convention and convection heat
14:07
further from it. And the heat, the heat design is
14:10
often linked to aroma development.
14:12
So it's I guess they're just slightly different.
14:15
And the other really interesting thing from this table too that I
14:17
I didn't quite realize is that the early Mikoa style tensha
14:21
ovens are said to have been developed around 1920 and that
14:25
it was a practical transition from hand drying to mechanized
14:29
drying. In early forms of this oven are
14:32
described as brick drying chambers with hands with a hand
14:37
fed movement, whereas the ones in Uji were a were more
14:43
developed continuous tension drying machine that combined
14:47
radiant heat and convection heat.
14:50
It's unclear like is that is this a giant pizza oven or
14:53
someone literally? It doesn't sound like a conveyor
14:56
belt is being used the the early Hori style ones.
15:00
That sounds like more of a conveyor and actually the model
15:04
at Hori Shishaman retail store of the first Hori style tensha
15:07
killed it looks like a a conveyor belt.
15:10
So little unclear what the early versions of this word in IT.
15:13
But this goes to show too that early 1920s so that they have at
15:17
least 100 years to mechanized tensha development, about the
15:22
same amount of mechanized tensha production as Uji actually.
15:26
So they're pretty historical or tension growing region.
15:29
Yeah, and also not that old if you think about it.
15:33
Yeah, both in both cases actually.
15:35
And one thing that they that this document really emphasizes
15:37
too is that, you know, these type style of tension ovens are
15:41
really optimized for flavor development.
15:45
You're not just dehydrating the leaf, but you're actually
15:47
creating new flavors. And the the contrast to this is,
15:52
is a new type of tension oven, which apparently is being widely
15:56
used in places like Kagushima, apparently some in Yamai as
16:00
well, what they call a simple or net type tension dryer.
16:05
And it uses almost entirely convection based heat.
16:09
So essentially you're using hot air to roast the tension and
16:12
there's very little radiant heat.
16:14
So yeah, it's basically a air fryer and the temperature on
16:19
average is they what they told us was on average 40°C less than
16:27
all of the more traditional tension ovens.
16:30
And we got to taste the side by side sample, one tension from a
16:34
simple tension dryer and one from a classic Mikola red brick
16:39
radiant dryer. And you could really tell the
16:42
difference in aroma. Like I'd say the one that came
16:46
out of the Mikola tastes like tension to me, like pretty
16:50
developed nice aroma where the one coming out of the simple
16:55
ornet type tension dryer was extremely green, very cucumber Y
17:01
kind of vegetal and much more harsh in its verdant.
17:07
See, it was very verdant, very kind of vegetal, harsh compared
17:13
to the one coming out of the radiant heat tension dryer.
17:18
You know, now that I think about it, like they were telling us
17:21
all these tent are sitting on some kind of a net or a mesh and
17:26
then it's purely hot air convection, roasting or drying.
17:30
This sounds a lot like all these rat tea roaster that have been
17:34
seeing in Shima and other places.
17:37
I actually saw all those too. I bet it's like maybe it's the
17:41
same thing or a very similar mechanism.
17:44
Interesting. Well maybe it's easy to produce
17:47
this type of tension. Maybe it's these net type
17:51
tension ovens. Could open the possibility for
17:53
not needing an entire tension factory using some existing
17:58
infrastructure. I've also heard that there are
18:03
some producers in Kagoshima that add like an extra step after
18:07
this that give it a blast of radiant heat.
18:10
It's like, I don't want to call it artificial because it's not,
18:13
but like a stage where there is some non red brick source of
18:17
radiant heat being applied to this processing specifically for
18:21
flavor and aroma development. But actually so the the color
18:25
difference is also big. The the one from the simple or
18:28
net type tension dryer is a greener color.
18:31
And one more reason why color is a very bad indicator for much
18:35
quality because the the radiant heat ovens are much better
18:39
tasting, much more complex, much more interesting.
18:42
But you do get better color preservation when this goes
18:45
through what is essentially A dehydrator, where you know hot
18:49
air is doing the work and removing the moisture content,
18:51
but it's developing very little flavor.
18:53
Yeah, heat really matters. Kind of counterintuitive.
18:57
It also matters doing tension milling to apparently too cold
19:00
is not desirable either. Yeah, heat is very important,
19:04
which does destroy some color, but it can add a lot of
19:07
different flavor. So these large net type systems
19:09
can process several 100 kilograms of fresh leaves per
19:13
hour, which is just a much, much larger throughput compared to
19:17
these radiant brick ovens. So you know, tension processing
19:20
too, this is something that we don't talk about enough on the
19:22
specialty much podcast is what type of tension oven was being
19:26
used to make your tension also has AI mean that's a lot of
19:29
mired Browning. A lot of flavor creation has
19:32
happened at that step. And if it's going through one of
19:35
these net style ones, you're going to end up with a much more
19:38
rougher, greener, better color cup than these more developed
19:42
ones coming out of these Hori style or Mikola style kilns.
19:47
I bet people blend. Probably both for color and for
19:52
flavor. That actually is probably a very
19:55
smart thing to do. Yeah, very interesting.
19:58
There are so many different technologies being used.
20:01
And just not that much of the public information that people
20:05
can learn about, but it actually makes a huge difference.
20:08
We taste all these attention fresh off from all these types
20:11
of oven and it's it's really drastic.
20:17
So we also got some industry gossip and some industry news
20:20
while we were there both in Nishio and when we were in
20:23
Toyota. And we've got bad news for
20:25
matcha prices. I'm so sorry, guys.
20:28
So the Kagoshima auction apparently on average has
20:32
approximately doubled in price for spring tension depending on
20:37
the day, I think. And the price, average price now
20:40
at least what we were told for this is material being sold at
20:44
auction. So it's pretty downstream of the
20:46
tension prices that we you see when, you know, you reach out to
20:49
someone trying to buy Tensha. There's very few people who are
20:52
actually allowed to buy the Kagoshima auction.
20:55
But the average price there is about ¥12,000 per kilogram,
21:00
which is just under 100 U.S. dollars.
21:02
And apparently a huge order was put in by a company that will
21:06
remain nameless and really shifted the market and really
21:11
raised prices. Yeah, the demand is high and the
21:14
supplied is very limited. Very limited.
21:17
So yeah, prices I think are going to continue to inch up.
21:21
The other thing that we were doing is apparently we've caught
21:25
wind of some news too, that there's a lot of tea laundering
21:28
not only going on in Uji but also going on in Yame.
21:33
And then if you look at the tensha production capacity and
21:37
the output of Macha and tensha, that's happening here in Yamai,
21:42
that there's a mismatch in the number and they're probably
21:45
blending a lot of material from elsewhere.
21:47
Yeah, the math is just not math things for a lot of these
21:51
places. Yeah, doesn't math and uji when
21:53
it comes to what's produced in ujis not mathing and yamai
21:57
pretty concerning problem. We wrote a big piece about this
21:59
on the sub stack about tea laundering, specifically with
22:03
regards to the GI for all of Japan, which we encourage
22:07
everyone to go read. You know, tea laundering from
22:09
from material coming from China, from Korea and to Japan is a
22:12
problem, but also between prefectures is a pretty big
22:16
problem. Yeah.
22:17
And it's not just Kagoshima, but also some other regions across
22:20
Japan that we also learn about, you know, some very legacy, you
22:26
know, heritage matcha brands in Japan who claims to be, you
22:31
know, like specific origin, but they are indeed still procuring
22:35
materials from other prefecture under the table, I guess.
22:38
Yeah, it's, it's interesting. Big mess.
22:42
Makes it very complicated if you want to source a specialty
22:45
product with transparency provenance.
22:48
Yeah, and and it's very difficult for other people, even
22:52
if they want to remained as a single origin Regent or a
22:56
producer. There's so many politics and
22:59
guanxi being maneuvered in all these places that a lot of
23:03
farmers are actually under a lot of social pressure in
23:07
participating this whole system, which is, you know, kind of
23:12
shocking to learn and also not that surprising.
23:14
Yeah. This whole system is so organic
23:17
and exists for so long that there's so many intertwined
23:21
relationships because. There's a lot more soft power
23:24
than I thought because we we were meeting with the farmer who
23:27
had kind of apprenticed under a large wholesaler and and blend
23:31
house and you know, they're under some obligation when they
23:34
go back and ask, can we buy some of this material to say yes?
23:38
So there's a lot of like soft power being exercised and
23:41
there's these huge advantages because the knowledge is so
23:45
gatekeep kept. You have to go learn how to
23:47
produce macho attention from someone.
23:50
And when you go, the act of acquiring that knowledge through
23:54
finding a senpai or a sensei is that you know, they can come and
23:59
turn around and ask for favors. So it's a huge amount of soft
24:04
power being levied by these very large blend houses and
24:08
wholesalers, which is removing a lot of supply from what could go
24:13
to a single origin single cultivar product and is now
24:16
being put in a blend. Totally agree.
24:18
And also on the other hand, a lot of these farmers are just so
24:21
willingly to work with these large blend houses and
24:25
especially those that, you know, based in Wuji or other famous
24:28
regions. It's kind of like an endorsement
24:31
of quality for them too. Like they can talk to other
24:33
people that you know, we are supplying for these brands
24:36
that's based in Fuji, even though that's true.
24:39
Yeah, good point. So, so yeah, it's very hard to
24:43
unwrapped, you know, all these relationships and disentangle
24:47
all of these relationships if we really want to push for a single
24:50
origin in the future. Yeah, a lot of legacy inertia
24:53
here. So we also spend a lot of time
24:56
in Nishio learning about, you know, very Nishio specific
24:59
things with an IT. And one of the things that
25:01
really surprised me as we asked a couple people this is if there
25:04
any Nishio native cultivars. Nishio has been growing tea
25:07
since Seattle. It's been growing matcha for the
25:10
past around 100 years, 100 plus years.
25:13
But they're primarily not using any Nishio native cultivars.
25:17
And everyone we asked, we're not aware that there was a single
25:21
native Nishio cultivar. So I'm not sure if it doesn't
25:24
mean mean that it doesn't exist, but if it does, it's probably
25:27
pretty obscure. Yeah, probably me.
25:29
Shields I rye. That's unheard of.
25:31
Well, we asked one of the farmers in Toyota about when
25:34
they made this transition because we keep asking everyone
25:37
this every time we have an opportunity. 1965 was the year
25:40
that they started, which is even earlier than some farmers in Uji
25:46
that we asked, which were more in the 1970s.
25:49
So we have at least a data point showing that Nishio was making
25:54
this transition even earlier than a lot of the families in
25:57
Gokasho and Shirakawa. Yeah.
25:59
And then I wonder how much, you know, contribution or
26:03
participation is required on the government or the, you know,
26:07
local tea institute side to kind of push for that to happen with
26:12
local farmers and also like develop, you know, local
26:15
cultivars. Because for all of these regions
26:20
that have their regional cultivar, they have a very like
26:23
active local tea institute, like Shizuoka, like Fuji, like Yame.
26:28
I bet that's like that's really important for, you know, this
26:32
kind of local flavor from a cultivar point of view to
26:35
develop. That's a really interesting
26:37
point. I don't know, that's a that's a
26:39
good question. Maybe they just didn't have that
26:41
research infrastructure the same way that these other places did.
26:45
I do know by reading some records at the early onishi,
26:48
early Nishio macho producers in like 50-60 seventies at a very
26:52
difficult time competing against Uji both in quality and price.
26:57
And actually part of the reason why we have much as a culinary
27:00
ingredient was an effort was a a large scale effort by Nishio
27:04
farmers to find new markets for their matcha because like
27:07
literally no one would buy it. And I heard there was a quote, I
27:10
think this is from one of the past leaders of Aya and was
27:14
trying to sell their their matcha to a bunch of these
27:16
different department stores. And someone said Uji and Matcha
27:21
are the same thing, is what he was told what he was trying to
27:24
sell and learned, figured out that this is a fool's errand, at
27:28
least in that environment, and tried to go after new markets.
27:31
Set a very, really fascinating history, the corporate history
27:34
of Aya and of Nishio, we want to deep dive into later.
27:38
There's another interesting legacy of Nishio that I had
27:40
heard of, but we actually ended up getting to see is they have a
27:43
very clever way to handpick T and it's by using local school
27:48
children. Yeah.
27:49
So a lot of middle schoolers and high schoolers.
27:52
And this program has been going on for a couple decades to kind
27:55
of learn about local agriculture and put these kids to work.
27:58
And they go and pick tea. And we were walking around
28:01
Nishio and we actually saw, I don't know, must have been what,
28:03
like 50 bicycles and 50 school kids eating their lunch on break
28:08
in the tea fields, picking tea. Child labor.
28:11
Child Labor. I was very tempted to ask if
28:16
those kids get paid if you still have seen anywhere outside of
28:20
Japan, but let's say like in the middle of nowhere China, we
28:23
would be by this these very like overly woke Western standards
28:28
because I would be calling for child labor.
28:30
But in Japan, I guess it's fine. Wow.
28:32
I remember doing that, the backing elementary school when I
28:35
was in China, that, you know, the school will kind of gather
28:39
us to go help farmers pick vegetables.
28:42
Really. Yeah, yeah.
28:45
And we feed like the local sheeps with some of the
28:48
vegetables we picked and then they would use those vegetables
28:52
to cook us meal by the end of the day.
28:55
No, that's nice. It's like you get to see where
28:57
your food comes from and. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
29:00
It's a school activity, but we're also like helping to.
29:04
Must have not been that good at picking vegetables if they fed
29:07
them to the sheep afterwards. I But we do get like quotas for
29:14
each class and then we kind of compete against each other.
29:17
That's so smart. That's what they should do
29:20
initio. Let's make it a gigantic
29:22
competition. Yeah, competition.
29:25
That's that. I wonder if they do that.
29:28
Who gets to be the Bok Choy king?
29:33
That's cool. Anyways, yeah, it's interesting
29:36
to see that that's happening in in Japan too.
29:40
I guess it's very like an Asian. I think, I think it's smart.
29:43
I mean, it's probably a good character building for these
29:45
kids. They can participate in local
29:48
agriculture, pick tea, learn about their heritage, maybe
29:51
hopefully develop an interest in it.
29:53
Yeah. So I mean.
29:55
Community event, Yeah. I also saw that in in Mazuka
30:00
too, when I was picking tea with Google last summer and it was
30:05
high school at that time. It was a lot of high schoolers
30:08
that kind of rode a big bus into Obooboo and we all picked
30:11
Sancha. That hand picking event was
30:13
pretty cool too because they processed the tea and gave
30:16
everyone a little sample of the tea that you picked.
30:18
It was, but that's even. That's even nicer, I think for
30:22
everyone who gets to participate in it is to really see the full
30:25
circle process and get to taste the end result.
30:28
Yeah. And, you know, it's also kind of
30:31
cultivating, you know, this tea drinking or tea consumption
30:34
habit in the newer generation, which is really the foundation
30:38
of the whole team, does change that.
30:40
Yeah. And a big problem because young
30:42
people don't have an interest in it.
30:44
So it's I think it's good to get everyone involved.
30:47
Yeah. One thing that we didn't talk
30:49
about is the shading structures are pretty different.
30:51
They tend to be on suspension cables.
30:54
So one of the ways that you can tell that something is an IT
30:57
when you're looking at T fields is there's a large post usually
31:01
made out of cement, but sometimes out of metal.
31:04
And then coming off of it just like a suspension bridge or a
31:07
bunch of cables which are holding up all of the ton of
31:10
structure. And you don't really see these
31:13
ton of structures anywhere else. I think I've seen some in China
31:19
from some producers in Jiajiang that use a very similar
31:22
mechanism. But in Japan I think IG are the
31:24
only people with these types of suspension based Tana
31:28
structures. You will wonder who's behind
31:30
those Jiajiang people. Indeed, indeed.
31:36
Well, there's really only two large companies in Nishio, Aya
31:40
and AOI. We recently taste the matcha
31:43
coming from Jia and was really good, so they're definitely
31:46
making some progress I guess. Totally.
31:49
And a lot of it are these raised Tana.
31:51
So it's even from a shading perspective is even higher
31:53
quality than what a lot of Japanese producers are doing.
31:57
But in initial actually it seems to also all be almost all raised
32:01
Tana. We saw very few directly shaded
32:04
bushes like you see in like Huazuka for example, and part of
32:08
the reason that those yield lower quality matcha is 1.
32:12
You can't shade for as long because it does a lot of damage
32:16
because the shading structure is directly in contact with the tea
32:19
leaves, but also it's trapping a lot of heat and a lot of
32:23
humidity. The tea Bush literally cannot
32:26
breathe. When it does that, it starts to
32:28
attract a lot of pests and pest control ends up being a big
32:32
problem. So the the ceiling on this
32:34
direct shading I think is typically around 3 weeks and you
32:38
cannot go that much longer without damaging the plant.
32:41
Whereas these tanish structures, there's people in Nishio for
32:44
example, shading well past 40 days when you separate that Tana
32:50
off of the plant itself. Well, this is one thing that
32:53
tawa does matter because in some regions it's just too difficult
32:57
to do a raised Tana because it's too windy like in some regions
33:01
in Mazuka. Yeah, and apparently that's why
33:03
there's no Hanzu shading either. Must have been very difficult
33:07
before the invention of Kanesha because it's just too windy to
33:12
keep the rice straw there. Yeah.
33:14
I wonder how people dealt with that, or if they just, like,
33:16
dealt with it and it was just their headache all season.
33:19
Every morning they go sprinkle new straw.
33:22
Straw. I collect all the straws on the
33:24
road. I can't even imagine.
33:25
It must have been so difficult before Khan they shot.
33:28
It's a wonderful invention. Well people in Wuji was talking
33:32
about it like all the bro sites are kind of scattered with all
33:35
these straws being blown away. You got to go collect them and
33:40
apologize to your neighbors. The dark side of intangible
33:46
cultural heritage. A lot of smeena smeemas and I go
33:49
manasa. And Speaking of Uji, to sort of
33:54
conclude this episode, you know, every once in a while we we pick
33:57
up different pieces of industry gossip.
33:59
And we learned that actually that some point about 20 years
34:02
ago or, you know, on the order of a decade or two ago, Uji was
34:07
offered some type of intangible cultural heritage status.
34:12
I don't think it was GI, but it was some some level of
34:14
protection to protect the tea industry there for the Uji macho
34:18
farming families. And apparently it was rejected
34:21
particularly for for a reason that I wouldn't have guessed,
34:24
but about zoning law and how you were allowed to use different
34:29
types of land. Because the more context we get,
34:31
we actually are learning that a lot of the Uji Macha farming
34:35
families do not necessarily rely off of agriculture or tea as
34:39
their sole source of income, but their land owners in an in a
34:43
town that is economically prosperous.
34:46
And that in some cases literally turning your tea field into a
34:49
parking lot is a better economic decision.
34:51
But there are also landlords and building owners and that they
34:55
make a lot of supplemental income doing things other than
34:57
tea. And they wanted to maintain that
34:59
level of flexibility and not basically forced to be tea
35:04
farmers with this level of protection.
35:06
That's right. You know, this is one thing that
35:08
Wuji is so different from other tea region in Japan is that it's
35:12
a tourist destination. You have all these, you know,
35:15
legacy tourist spots like beyond Dong in and all these places
35:20
that would naturally just subtract a lot of the traffic
35:23
from tourists. And it's just a better, you
35:26
know, business model for a lot of people to, you know, not do
35:30
tea, but you know, kind of facilitate or accommodate all of
35:33
these incoming tourists, which was, I guess a very easy
35:37
decision to make. Back in the days by Macha, price
35:39
was not that. True.
35:40
We had 20 years ago. Who could have known this was
35:42
coming? Yeah.
35:44
And you know, they probably made the right decision, right?
35:48
People like us are going to find them anyway because some of the
35:50
most famous tea growing region in Japan, right?
35:53
So they're going to have an export market.
35:55
Even if this matcha boom goes away, there will be enough
35:58
demand for the Uji matcha farmers which have the most
36:00
famous name. And even to this day, I mean
36:03
like with all these automations, but still like farming matcha is
36:07
so laborers, it's so much headaches and people are getting
36:12
old. And, you know, managing a, you
36:14
know, parking lot that basically pays itself is just like so much
36:19
easier than managing a tea garden, especially for these
36:23
grandmas and grandpas. And you don't want to also just
36:27
close the door on that, right? Like having that level of
36:30
protection basically closes the door on all of your optionality
36:33
forever, right? With the zoning laws, like an
36:36
intangible cultural heritage. It's like actually one of my
36:40
complaints about being in some cities like Rome.
36:43
I've been in and out of Rome for work, and it just feels like
36:46
you're trapped in a museum, right?
36:48
There's very like it. It feels like the city is
36:51
fundamentally untouchable because it's so old.
36:54
There's very little room to adapt or create new buildings or
36:58
to do this or do that. Like it just feels trapped in
37:01
time, which in some ways is incredibly good, and that it
37:06
feels like you're entering a place that's locked in time.
37:09
But also it really prevents a lot of dynamism for the people
37:12
that are actually living there who actually want some level of
37:16
opportunity. No wonder I saw all these
37:19
graffitis on all these, you know, statues and old buildings
37:23
in Rome. Clearly some sentiment of
37:26
rebellion against that suffocating environment, I guess
37:29
from a local point of view. Yeah, whereas so, you know, a
37:32
place like New York, it's built and rebuilt and built and
37:36
rebuilt with different waves of migration and it's just
37:39
constantly adaptive, but still authentically New York, right.
37:43
Like this is a much closer to a living tradition and real
37:46
tradition is where actual people are actually living and making
37:50
decisions and allowed to determine their livelihood.
37:53
So I actually don't, I don't judge these uji macho farmers at
37:56
all for rejecting this level of protection in the past.
37:59
Yeah, yeah. But you know, this really
38:01
explains all these urbanization that's happening in Wuji and why
38:05
we have all these quote UN quote, Hwy. teas and all these
38:08
tea plots that's sitting in the middle of the city or right next
38:11
to a highway. Yeah.
38:13
And even all the abandoned tea fields, right?
38:16
Like they're all over each like right next to the Okonoyama tea
38:19
garden, arguably the single most important tea garden in Japan,
38:23
dating back to Uji Shishimaya and the state controlled
38:26
monopoly of the Otto period. It's the only one that's still
38:29
being cultivated. Like right next door.
38:31
There's an abandoned tea plot quite like it's, I don't know
38:34
what the story of this abandoned tea plot is, but, you know,
38:38
having some optionality for whoever is owning that land to
38:42
repurpose it because they don't want to do tea anymore.
38:45
Is, you know, is that a good thing or a bad thing?
38:48
It's hard to say. You can really argue both ways.
38:51
But I think there's a lot of damage to if it's all trapped in
38:54
a gigantic glass box. Agree.
38:56
Agree. Change is the most important
38:58
part of any tradition. Otherwise it's it's no longer a
39:01
living heart. I bet there's a very long queue
39:04
behind that abandoned T plot because some grandma grandpa is,
39:08
you know, having a very hard time gatekeeping that piece of
39:12
land or whatever. We.
39:14
Indeed. All right.
39:15
Well, I think it's a great place to stop.
39:17
Sam, do you have anything left in your notes?
39:19
No. I think we, uh, gone through
39:21
everything. If you enjoyed this, please
39:23
consider sharing with the friend and we'll see you in the next
39:25
one. Thanks.
39:25
In the future.