Japanese with anime voice: episode50
Hello, I’m Sachi.
Today is the birthday of Thomas Lipton, founder of tea manufacturer Lipton, and it was also the same day that Lipton opened his first grocery shop, so there is some kind of connection with 10 May – so Unilever Japan, the Lipton distributor, has established 10 May as Lipton Day.
By the way, 緑茶 (ryokucha) and 紅茶 (koucha) in Japanese are the same tea in terms of category, so why do we go to the trouble of adding 緑 (midori) and 紅 (beni) before the word お茶 (ocha) to distinguish them as 緑茶 (ryokucha) and 紅茶 (koucha)? When I investigated what the difference was, I found that there was a difference in the production method. In the case of green tea, the tea leaves are used as they are, but in the case of black tea, the tea leaves are fermented. Fermentation does not mean fermentation with bacteria like natto or cheese, but in the tea world, oxidation is called fermentation. After the tea leaves are plucked, they are left to dry and oxidize. This phenomenon is called fermentation, not oxidation. It is interesting that the tea leaves are the same, but the taste and name change depending on the production method.
I currently live in Shizuoka Prefecture, which is the most famous prefecture in Japan for its tea. In Japan, when you think of tea, you think of Shizuoka. There are tea fields everywhere. The tea trees in a straight line are as wide as the rice paddies. This is beautiful from a distance, but the truth is that my hometown is also secretly a tea-producing region. My hometown is a large town in the north-west of Gifu Prefecture, on the border between Fukui and Shiga Prefectures. There, the higher you go into the mountains, the more tea fields there are. In Shizuoka, there are tea fields all over the place, but in my hometown, there are no tea fields in the town, and most of the tea fields are on the slopes of the mountains. There are also tea fields with the indigenous species, which are not in a straight line like in Shizuoka. They are shaped like a puzzle. It’s an interesting shape when you look at it from above, but it looks beautiful in its own way. This is a tea plantation that has remained in its old style for hundreds of years. I think it is a cultural heritage that we should continue to cherish. But, you see, in these tea fields where the tea trees are not planted together, it is not possible to use machines. So we have to pick the tea by hand. In the past, picking tea was commonplace and there was enough manpower to do it, so I think there was a balance between supply and demand. Nowadays, however, the demand for ease and convenience has increased, and tea farmers have had to introduce machines, so they have been replanting their tea fields in a straight line to make it easier for the machines to use. So, over time, straight tea fields have become the norm. This way, the balance between supply and demand is maintained. But in the case of the indigenous species, even now they can only be picked by hand, which is an important culture to preserve, but in the depopulating countryside, there are no young people to take over this labor-intensive process.
Whether it is really a good thing that culture is dying out for the sake of convenience, or whether it is necessary to continue to preserve a labor-intensive and time-consuming culture that cannot produce successors, is a question that cannot be answered in either case.
As for me, I am now more inclined to keep the tradition alive, even if it takes a lot of work and effort.
When I was younger, it was convenient. I wanted to avoid things that took a lot of time and effort. But recently, I wondered why I wanted convenience so much, and why I was in such a hurry to get on with my life. I think this is probably because I quit my job. When you work in a company, you can never be late in the morning, and you have to commute to work in addition to your working hours. 80% of your day is taken up by work, so it becomes important to shorten your life to make room for that work. Then you forget more and more important things. Now that I don’t work for a company, I’m not pressed for time, so I’ve come to think that it’s okay to put in the time and effort.
However, I still have to work to make a living. Even in such a situation, I hope that the world will become a place where both can coexist, where we don’t seek everything that is easy and convenient, but sometimes we also preserve the traditions of the past.
