How you doing everybody.

Welcome to the green tea plantation up here in the hills of Shizuoka Prefecture.

I don't know how the signal looks, but I wanted to share with you a little bit from up here on the top Of of the mountain in in food.

Well, we're only about 200 m up.

But you can see the view is spectacular.

How you doing right now.

They are harvesting the green tea.

This is a leaves.

What's gonna end up being the tea that we produce and drink.

And I'm here to film for the this afternoon the process of the harvesting and you can almost see the processing plant just down here about a kilometer away.

Everything is done so fresh.

In fact, you can take the tea that they harvest right now and you can drink that today.

The process is so fast.

Here they come.

This is how they harvest the tea.

Almost everybody does it by by like a lawnmower like machine.

And then they'll take the bag after they've they've cut off the green tea and then put a new bag on and do it again.

Mhm.

Mhm.

This might be the best place to work too.

The only thing that that that it might not be good are the fumes from the machine.

Look at the green tea all being injected with that bag I share.

Mm hmm.

A It's a little bit windy up here.

But it's interesting though that they actually make harvest the green tea, grow it on slopes.

Which make it, I guess you would say challenging to harvest this thing.

I can't see how it would be easy to do that, but the slopes make sure that they get a lot of sunlight too.

So there's a reason behind the shape of the green tea bushes here.

It makes it easy for the machines to harvest it.

That's why the shapes are, that's why the shape is the way it is, the hedges being this far apart.

So you can see what it looks like harvested and what it looks like when it's grown.

And this is the 1st, 1st harvest, the first flush, I guess you would say, uh, I apologize.

I don't know in the countryside with the signals like this is a live stream guys, So thanks for watching and they can produce like so many tons of green tea like this.

They do three flushes annually.

The next one will be in the summer and then once again in the fall, the taste is always the best with the first flush, which is harvested between at the end of april.

So the first week of the first week of May, it does smell really good here except for the uh, it does smell really good here except for the, the exhaust maybe even from the machine, but it's a really natural smell.

Um, up here, it's just wonderful.

I smell, I smell like, it smells like fresh cut grass, but like a green tea smell.

So it's so natural.

Um, Shizuoka is one of the largest, if not the largest green tea producer in Japan and a lot of this that's produced here is santa and this santa after it's processed, they actually will make it into matchup powder to which we use in confections.

So that's another reason why I'm here.

I got to come back in a week or two to to get the industrial macha grinding, which is gonna be really fascinating.

And then how do they take that powder and turn it into desserts and coffee and macha latte.

It all comes from this, the tree right in front of you.

You see this, this is the uncut one and you can see over there these have been cut in the distance, but it's it's just fascinating the ones where the bags are, these will be cut and then every time they switch out the bags and they just keep doing it and doing it the rails here, you can see this, it looks like a little train.

This transports from one side to the other and it's a pretty unique process to see the train going because they have so many bags, they'll take the bags, put it into the truck and then the truck takes it to the processing plant.

I hope this signal is nice.

We were lucky.

We have a beautiful day with blue skies, we've got a river down there and you have these slopes with beautiful green tea and watching them harvest, this is like a dream come true to just enjoy it, enjoy the natural world up here.

Yeah, right.

Ronald.

Thanks for letting me know the signal is good.

It's nice to be able to share this with you.

Mm hmm.

The drone shots are up here are pretty amazing too by the way.

So, this episode, I'm really excited to edit this one.

You can see the T going into the machine a That is so awesome.

It is pretty loud.

Daniel again, The view it up here is remarkable.

Mhm I came here by Shinkansen.

Mhm And then drove about 30 minutes from Shizuoka station this morning and I'm just really happy that I'm able to bring you a little bit of this process.

Again, it will be a main channel episode in a couple, a few weeks after I get back from Hokkaido, I think I'll be able to edit this up.

Yeah, thank you.

Tokyo Poll Live.

That'll buy me a cup of tea here.

Hey Hawaiian seats actually cutting, you can see there are blades on here and the blades are cutting it and putting it into the bag.

The blowers blow it in the back of the bag and there's some holes in the bag to let the air go through.

But the, the, the bag will catch the leaves and then you can see right there.

It's quite heavy goal of the leaves and you can see the blades at the end of the machine that they use to go over the the shrubs here, the green the green tea shrubs.

Again, you can see the hop out or the leaves growing out of it that are standing up straight.

You want them to come up straight like this because then it's easier to cut.

And the cut is a lot cleaner normally though you in the olden days of course they would hand pick it but there's no difference in the taste.

These are hedges you could drink, they missed, they missed a bunch here but I think they're gonna come back and cut that later.

But you can see what it looks like it's freshly cut and has a really nice smell to it.

How does the green tea leaf taste?

It doesn't really have any taste.

It turns into t when and during the processing when it's actually steamed and then dried, steamrolled and dried.

I'm going to learn about the process when I go down to the factory.

But it's it's just fascinating isn't it?

To see how they make the green tea here.

I guess they just discovered that I've gone live.

It's raw, right Calvin.

Exactly.

The green tea raw doesn't taste like green tea.

I'm gonna pan over here.

Just get a quick look up here on the plateau.

I'll put a link in the description and then you can see exactly where I am from.

Google maps.

It's a pretty it's a really pretty spot.

But after this, I'm gonna be drinking green tea instead of coffee.

Maybe for a little bit of, for a little while what I like.

Of course we are live.

Thank you.

Mhm Thank you Oliver.

And now they're going to be putting the bags into the truck and we're going to follow them.

I got to get ready and follow these into into town which is just a kilometer away And then they process it and I'm going to film that inglorious 8K.

It's a lot of work.

But when you're up here at such a beautiful elevation, it's pretty much worth it, isn't it?

There's the boss right there.

He's going down the line I guess to maybe harvest the rest of it.

But I'm gonna go to the factory now.

I hope you enjoyed it.

That's right.

I am going to stalk them and follow them to the factory.

I hope you enjoyed it.

The view is absolutely stunning with the blue skies here.

I wouldn't say they allow visitors.

I called ahead and had to get permission.

But I bet you when tourism opens there's some places in Shizuoka where you can go for green tea.

Tourism.

I hope you enjoyed it.

Thanks for hanging out for a little bit.

I'll try to bring the shinkansen back to Tokyo in a few hours.

I'm sure that with you might get an extra bend.

Um but yeah, by from Shizuoka and see you again on the other side in Tokyo, it smells good.

What do you wanna start?

Okay, so you're going?