"They were delighted to see how much the seedlings they planted five years ago had grown." Hiraoka-san tells us.
Late May, the first flush just finished. Every year around this time, he invites visitors to his farm in Tokorozawa, Saitama Prefecture, to pick tea. The seedling-planting event happened five years earlier — children placing potted seedlings in the field, about two thousand per block, a time-consuming task. The children who had seen the tiny seedlings must have been delighted to see the grown tea trees.
Eleven generations in Tokorozawa
Tadahito Hiraoka. Eleventh generation. Hiraoka Tea Farm, Tokorozawa City, Saitama Prefecture.
The family's presence in this area stretches back roughly three hundred years, to a land-reclamation project in the middle of the Edo period known as the Santomi Kaitaku. The original settlers were vegetable farmers, but they planted tea bushes along the ridges between their plots — narrow strips of green stitched between vegetable rows. That was how tea began here. Not as a main crop, but as a border plant. Almost an afterthought.
Three centuries later, the tea is no longer an afterthought. Inside the processing facility, you can see the years layered one on top of another — old tools that have been used for many years. Among the producers we have visited across Japan, very few can trace their tea-making back this far. The tea industry in Kagoshima, for comparison, only took off about sixty years ago. Hiraoka Tea Farm was already ancient by then.
Tadahito-san began making tea nineteen years ago. He graduated university, spent a year training in Shizuoka, then came home.
"I always assumed I would take over the farm. I was the eldest son — it just felt like the natural thing." He says it plainly, without sentimentality. A fact of life, quietly accepted.
Sayama tea and the finishing roast
There is an old saying in Japan: "Color belongs to Shizuoka, fragrance to Uji, but for taste — Sayama finishes it." Sayama tea comes from western Saitama, the tea-growing region closest to Tokyo. It is a colder place than most Japanese tea country. Where Shizuoka and Kyushu enjoy mild winters and early springs, Sayama sits further north, exposed to sharper cold. The shoots grow slowly here, storing nutrients through the long chill, and the leaves that emerge are noticeably thicker than their southern counterparts. Dense, sturdy leaves. Built for a harder climate.
But what sets the region apart is not climate alone. It is the culture of independence.
In major producing areas like Shizuoka and Kagoshima, the supply chain typically runs through chasho — tea merchants who buy, blend, and redistribute. The producer grows and processes; the merchant decides how it reaches the consumer. In Sayama, the tradition has long been different. Producers here grow, process, and sell their own tea, start to finish. No middleman. No compromise on vision.
The consequence is small volumes — the tea rarely travels far from its home region — and a producer community that makes exactly the tea it wants to make. Each farm's character comes through undiluted.
And then there is sayama-bi-ire — the Sayama finishing roast. All sencha undergoes a final heating step to drive off moisture and develop aroma, but in this region the roast runs deeper and longer. The heat coaxes out a robust, toasty fragrance and brings out the tea's sweetness. The method and intensity vary from producer to producer but the result is unmistakable. The stronger roast adds fragrance and brings out the tea's sweetness.
The forest that feeds the fields
"Since you are here, shall we go look at the tea fields?"
Hiraoka-san leads me through his property, and before we reach the tea rows, we pass through a forest. Zelkova and cedar, tall enough to form a canopy overhead. Dappled light on the path. This is not accidental woodland. It was planted during the Edo period for a specific purpose — and it is still serving that purpose today.
Every autumn, the leaves fall and are gathered into compost piles. That compost feeds the tea fields. Forest to soil, soil to tea, season after season. A closed loop, running unbroken for three hundred years.
When this area was first settled, the land was not suited for farming. The forest was created as a windbreak and a source of compost to improve the soil. Circular agriculture here goes back to the Edo period.
The forest supplies compost and serves as a windbreak for the fields.
Ten cultivars and a seven-year oolong
Hiraoka Tea Farm grows roughly ten cultivars across two and a half hectares — Yabukita, Sayamakaori, Harumidori, Hokumei, Musashikaori, and several others.
The most revealing project is the oolong tea he makes from Musashikaori, one of the cultivars he grows. Seven years of development before its release in 2020. Its fruity aroma makes it a pleasure to drink.
Beyond the oolong, he produces single-origin black teas from multiple cultivars and experiments with the same variety grown under different conditions — open-field and shaded — to see how each method reshapes the leaf. He also grows both open-air and kabuse (shaded) versions of the same cultivar, comparing the two side by side. The impulse is not novelty for its own sake. Curiosity, applied methodically, over years.
Seeing their faces
Without a merchant to broker the relationship, Hiraoka-san's customers are his own to find. He started selling online early, and he uses social media with a fluency that many producers twice his age — and half — might envy. Drone footage of the tea fields from above. The quiet, meditative work of trimming the hedgerows. The careful choreography of blending sencha. These are the moments most consumers never see, and Hiraoka-san puts them out into the world with a matter-of-factness that makes them feel intimate rather than performative.
The farm also has a shop on the grounds, and when I visited, a regular customer stopped in to buy tea.
"I keep going because I can see the faces of my customers," Hiraoka-san says. No grand mission, no manifesto. Just the knowledge that the people drinking his tea are real, and reachable, and pleased.
We pass along the impressions customers share with us to the producers we work with. They are always delighted to hear them. For producers who rarely see their customers, those impressions can be especially encouraging.
Tokorozawa, three centuries deep
In Tokorozawa, Hiraoka Tea Farm preserves a connection between its fields and the forest that supplies their compost.
The old tools in the processing facility are reminders of the farm's long history.
