So this is the main reason why I went to Yakushima. I got to know Hachimanjyu Tea while I was working for teapasar and decided to visit them on my trip to Japan to say hi properly and thank them for being willing to work with us.

Who is Hachimanjyu Tea?

Hachimanjyu Tea is a family-owned, organic tea farm located in Yakushima, Japan. They’ve been farming tea organically from day one, which makes them pretty unique as pesticides and fertilisers were standard practice in the times when the farm was opened.

The farm was started in by three friends in 1985 (hence the name, which is a composite of all three names of the founders), the day to day running of the farm is currently carried out by the Watanabe family. They’re also the people that I met on my visit! They are extremely friendly people – when I messaged to let them know I would be visiting, they very helpfully recommended a few places and even extended an offer of help should I need it.

My Visit

Hachimanjyu Tea was literally my first stop in Yakushima after the car rental agency. The first thing you’ll see is the shop:

It’s pretty hard to miss, but if you have car navigation you can enter the shop’s phone number (seen in picture) to get the location. There’s some space next to the shop where you could park.

We walked in and I met Watanabe-san, who drove us to the farm. It’s behind the shop and pretty close by if you take a car (probably two or three minutes drive?)

The farm is absolutely beautiful! It’s at the foot of one of the mountains, but I don’t think my photos show that very well. Yakushima is described as containing all the seasons of Japan – at the base of the mountain where the farm is, the temperature is pretty tropical (like Okinawa) but if you climb to the top, it gets much cooler (like Hokkaido).

I actually thought the farm was pretty big, but clearly that is my inexperience talking because I was told that this is pretty small for a Japanese farm. They make their own tea in the factory next to the shop, and apparently that’s considered small too! But considering that I’ve talked to other Japanese farmers who sell their harvested tea leaves to factories to have it made into tea by batches, a farm retaining full control is considered relatively rare in the grand scheme of things (although I’m sure most artisinal farms are doing things this way)

More pictures of the leaves! Sadly, we missed the harvest season but apparently they use machines to pick the tea plants. Even though the farm is small, it’s too much labour for them to handpick everything, especially since they are already doing without pesticides and chemical fertilisers.

This little insect is a baby バッタ (batta) aka grasshopper.

And these are the leaves of the kuritawase cultivar. They grow a few different types of cultivars on the farm, including Yabukita and Yutakamidori. The Kuritawase cultivar is apparently quite rare even in Japan [1]. The guy who created it is Kurita-san (栗田) and because it has an early harvest date (早生), it was given the name 栗田早生 (Kuritawase). Sadly, this cultivar isn’t sold on its own so I couldn’t get my hands on it – I’ll have to keep an eye out!

After visiting the farm, we headed back to the shop. Watanabe-san and his family very generously treated us to tea, ice cream, and pears and even offered lots of advice on what we could do in Yakushima.

Their shop sells ice cream, tea (of course, all the tea is from their farm), as well as other products grown/made locally, so it’s a good place to pick up souvenirs. We ended up buying a lot of tea, some for family and some for ourselves.

This was a fantastic experience – I learnt a lot just being at a farm and seeing the tea plants up close. Fingers crossed that I’ll be able to visit more farms on future visits to Japan.

More Information

The farm is located just down the road from Yakushima airport. It’s very easy to get to if you’re driving, so if you’ve rented a car you should not miss this.

I also did an interview with them during my time in teapasar – the interview was conducted in Japanese and translated to English. So if you’d like more information on the history of the farm and Yakushima, you can read the interview here.

My previous review of their teas

Address: 日本、〒891-4207 鹿児島県熊毛郡屋久島町小瀬田５３２−２４

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[1] According to this webpage, it makes up 1% of the tea plants grown in Japan.