Uji in June: Walking Kyoto's First-Flush Tea Fields in the Rain

The rain started before I reached the tea fields and never stopped. This was fine. June in Uji means rain, and rain means the leaves are doing exactly what they should — pushing out soft, amino-acid-rich growth under diffused light. The town sits along the Uji River about twenty minutes south of Kyoto by JR Nara Line, and during first-flush season it smells like cut grass and wet stone.

Most people pass through Uji for the Byōdō-in temple, photograph the phoenix hall, and leave. That's backward. The temple is worth a look, but the reason to come in June is tea — specifically, the narrow window when shincha is days off the bush and the farmers haven't yet turned their attention to second flush.

1. What first flush actually means here

Ichibancha — first-flush tea — is picked from late April through May in most of Japan, but Uji's shaded gyokuro and tencha fields run later. The covering process (called ōishita saibai) blocks roughly 90% of sunlight for twenty days or more, which forces the leaves to overproduce L-theanine instead of converting it to catechins. The result is a tea that tastes more like dashi than what most people imagine green tea to be.

By June, the freshest shincha is already processed and resting in cold storage, but many farms and shops in Uji still have quantities from that spring's harvest that haven't been blended or shipped to wholesalers. You're buying at the source, often from the family that grew it.

2. Tsuen Tea, and the weight of 900 years

Tsuen Tea (通圓) sits directly across the Uji Bridge at Ujibashi-dōri 1-chōme. The family claims to have been selling tea here since 1160, which would make it the oldest tea shop in the world. I have no way to verify that, and honestly it doesn't matter — what matters is the bowl of usucha they'll make you for ¥500 while you sit on a bench facing the river.

The matcha is grassy and slightly bitter in a way I liked. Not the creamy, sweet profile that competition-grade matcha producers chase. The shop is small and gets crowded by 11 a.m.; I went at 9:30 on a Wednesday and had the bench to myself for twenty minutes.

They also sell hojicha soft serve. Skip it. The roasted-tea flavor gets buried under dairy and sugar. You can find better soft serve at three other places on the same street, or you can just drink the tea.

3. Walking the fields along the east bank

Cross the Uji Bridge heading east, turn right along the river path, and within ten minutes the shop-lined streets give way to residential blocks and then, abruptly, tea rows. The hedges are shin-high in some fields, waist-high in others, and the shaded ones are draped in black netting that billows when the wind picks up.

You cannot walk into the fields — these are private farms, not attractions — but the paths between them are public and largely empty. The smell is clean and vegetal, somewhere between seaweed and fresh-cut lawn. I walked for about forty minutes in light rain, shoes soaked, passing maybe four other people.

One farmer was sorting cuttings beside a small shed. He nodded. That was the extent of our interaction.

4. Nakamura Tokichi: the gyokuro that changed how I think about tea

Nakamura Tokichi Honten (中村藤吉本店) on Uji Ichiban is the most famous tea house in town, and for once, the reputation is earned. Ignore the café line — it wraps around the building by noon, and people are waiting for matcha parfaits. Go to the shop counter instead and ask for a tasting of their single-origin gyokuro.

I tried the Okumidori cultivar, ¥1,620 for 40 grams. The first steep was savory, thick on the tongue, with a sweetness that arrived late and lingered. The second steep opened up into something lighter. By the third, it tasted like a different tea entirely. I bought two bags and have been rationing them since.

Most tea writing calls gyokuro "umami-rich" and leaves it there. That's lazy. The Nakamura Okumidori had a specific marine quality — closer to the liquid inside a raw oyster than to kombu dashi. If that sounds unappetizing, gyokuro might not be for you, and that's a legitimate position.

5. A contrarian word about matcha

Here's the thing nobody in Uji wants to say out loud: most visitors come for matcha, and matcha is the least interesting tea the region produces. It's the entry point, the Instagram-friendly powder that goes into lattes and cakes and KitKats. Ceremonial-grade matcha from Uji is genuinely good, but it's a finished product designed to taste consistent.

Gyokuro and high-grade sencha, by contrast, change with every harvest, every cultivar, every producer's firing decisions. They reward attention. If you've traveled to Uji and only drink matcha, you've gone to Burgundy and ordered the house rosé.

6. Where to stay if you want a slow morning

Most people day-trip Uji from Kyoto, and that works fine. But staying overnight means you can walk the river path before the tour groups arrive — through mist at 6 a.m. with no sound except the current and the occasional crow.

The Hanayashiki Ukifune-en (花やしき浮舟園) is a ryokan on the riverbank, a few minutes' walk from Byōdō-in, with rooms starting around ¥18,000 per person including dinner and breakfast. The building shows its age in places — slightly worn tatami, dated bathroom fixtures — but the kaiseki dinner featured a chawan-mushi with matcha-infused dashi that I've thought about more than once since.

Alternatively, stay in central Kyoto and take the 7:03 a.m. JR Nara Line from Kyoto Station. You'll be in Uji by 7:20.

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7. The soba shop behind the shrine

After three hours of tea tasting I needed something solid. Behind Ujigami Shrine — itself worth twenty minutes for its stripped-down Kamakura-era architecture — there's a soba restaurant called Hanashirube (花しるべ) on a residential lane. No English sign. Look for the dark wood facade and the noren curtain.

I ordered the chilled soba with a side of matcha salt, ¥950. The noodles had a firm, grainy bite, and the dipping broth was lighter on the bonito than what you get in Tokyo. The matcha salt was a gimmick, frankly — the soba didn't need it — but the meal itself was clean and precise. I sat at the counter by the window and watched rain collect on a stone lantern in the garden for longer than was strictly necessary.

8. Buying tea to take home (and what not to buy)

Byōdō-in Omotesandō, the tourist street leading to the temple, is lined with tea shops. Some are excellent. Some are selling tea blended in Shizuoka with Uji branding. No easy way to tell from the outside.

Two reliable shops: Marukyu Koyamaen (丸久小山園) has a retail counter on Omotesandō and sells clearly labeled single-origin teas. Their competition-grade matcha "Kinrin" runs around ¥3,240 for 40 grams and is, by any measure, extravagant — but it tastes like a different substance from grocery-store matcha. Ito Kyuemon (伊藤久右衛門) on the main road near Uji Station is larger and more tourist-oriented, but their houjicha loose leaf at ¥540 for 100 grams is honest and ships well.

Don't buy flavored teas — matcha-strawberry blends, sakura-scented sencha — from anywhere. They're made for gift boxes, not for drinking.

9. Leaving Uji in the rain

I took the late afternoon train back to Kyoto with damp socks and 200 grams of tea in my bag. The river was higher than it had been that morning. A few cormorants sat on the rocks below the bridge, ignoring the weather.

Uji is not a place that tries to impress you. No spectacles, no experiences engineered for delight. It's a town that grows tea and has been doing so for longer than most countries have existed, and if you show up in the right month and pay attention, it will teach you something about patience and flavor and the difference between water that's 70°C and water that's 80°C.

The 16:42 train was nearly empty. I fell asleep somewhere around Tōfukuji and woke up at Kyoto Station, still smelling like wet leaves.

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