Hello, little shoots. We've been waiting.

It's almost time. The most electric season on the Uji tea farm is nearly here — the hand-picking harvest.

Walking between the rows of tea bushes, the new shoots are already emerging. Pale, translucent green, impossibly tender. They sway gently in the breeze, and it's hard not to feel a quiet excitement just standing among them.

Hand-picking reaches a place that machines simply cannot. The softness of a shoot between your fingertips, the faint sound of each pluck, the fresh, grassy scent that rises around you — every moment of this process shapes the flavor of our tea.

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