Noticing a growing interest in Japanese tea, this year we held the Japanese Tea Master Course twice. The second course took place in September. September can be tricky with the weather as it is called the typhoon season in Japan. This year luckily, they let us carry on without interruption.
This time the course was fully booked. All places got taken, and even more people wanted to participate.And what an interesting and diverse group it was. We welcomed several university professors, tea farmers and many tea professional or those aspiring to be.
During the two-weeks time, the students could experience all about Japanese tea. The course involved two different harvesting methods: picking by hand and machine-harvesting; as well as two different processing methods: the traditional Japanese tea hand-rolling as well tea making by pan-frying it. This time we also look more into each individual Japanese tea kind, from Sencha, to Gyokuro, Matcha Hojicha and others. The course also covered the cultural side of tea and students could experience two different kinds of tea ceremony. At the graduation many students were so moved, that you could see the glitter of the tears on the cheeks.
Next year we are planning to hold the course 4 times: in April, May, July and September. The exact dates will be announced on the website soon.