13/04/2026
We visited farmer Atsushi Nagata in Unzen to help with some shading of the tea bushes.
Nagata has about 6 hectares of tea and still does a lot of the farming mainly by himself. His father helps, but does not enter the tea factory anymore - he just helps in the tea fields and has left the factory work to his son for 10 years now.
•
We had a great chat with Nagata’s father whilst weeding, removing the windswept bamboo leaves and other branches off the top of the bushes, and punning the shading nets on the tea.
He started farming when he was 18 years old - now a very ‘genki’ (healthy!) 72 years old, he claims his good health due to baseball practice.
He started with studying tea farming and production in Miyazaki, learned the kamairicha style that was popular at the time, and then 10 years later switched to steamed tamaryokucha as the whole region switched to the steamed style of processing.
Nagata proudly told us that he was the very first farmer in the 1970’s who brought the newer fukamushi (deep-steamed) style of processing to Nagasaki from Shizuoka, and quickly many farmers followed him. Currently nearly all the tamaryokucha in Nagasaki is all deep-steamed.
•
Shading in Unzen started last week ~7 April, and the first tea fields are expected to be harvested from the 17th (this week Friday), which is also the first date that the nearest tea auction in Ureshino has set to open its doors.
•
We invited extra hands to come along with us to make the work go faster (and to make it more fun)!
Thank you to:
from at
•
A huge thank you to and for inviting us 🌱💚🍃
•
We are excited to taste this year’s new tea and are prepared to fall completely in love again with their Sakimidori which we bought the last remaining 2 kg of in January and then promptly sold out of it during the tour in Europe in the next month.
