Marumo Mori Co., Ltd.

At tea garden in Makinohara city on July.

This is a tea garden in Iwata city in Shizuoka prefecture. The tea plants cover the area like a lush green carpet. Leaf picking is done by a tea picking machine operated by a driver.

This is a tea garden in Umegashima, the highest tea garden in Japan, located in the mountains of Shizuoka prefecture.

This is how the Umegashima tea garden looks like in May. The light green tree seen against the dark green background is a Japanese persimmon tree. In the olden times, the picked tea leaves were piled up in the shade of this tree.

Due to the mountainous terrain, tea picking machines that are driven cannot be used to pick leaves at Umegashima. Hand held tea picking machines are used instead.

Just like in the olden times, they also do tea picking by hand. In the left picture are volunteers from universities helping local tea growers. The picture on the right shows freshly picked leaves.