Two Interns from America Visit Our Tea Farm

At the end of June, two interns, Roy and Denny, joined us from UCLA—the University of California, Los Angeles.

They will spend approximately one month with us, working in the tea fields in Sera and Onomichi three to four days a week and helping at our shop in Onomichi on the remaining days.

Although this is their first time in Japan, they have already shown how capable and independent they are. On their very first day, they bought plenty of ingredients at a local supermarket and began cooking for themselves.

In the fields, they helped us dig drainage channels with hoes to release the water that had accumulated after the heavy rains of the rainy season. Their strength was remarkable—they worked so powerfully and quickly that they even managed to bend one of the hoes.

With 30,000 young tea plants newly planted this spring, having the two of them here is incredibly reassuring.

Roy studies biotechnology at university, so we are also looking forward to seeing what kinds of research he might explore during the internship, perhaps experimenting with ideas such as grafting the young tea plants in Sera—something we may never have considered ourselves.