Green Tea: Nature’s Generative AI (AntIoxidant)

With so many headlines calling attention to the mounting threats posed to everyone’s jobs by artificial intelligence, I found it incredibly reassuring, as a captcha-solving human, to visit a country that has for countless centuries nurtured the most exquisite, most irreplaceable artisanal crafts: Japan.

Masters here have perfected the art of hiding complexity beneath the most beautiful layers of simplicity, whether in painting, sculpture, woodworking, or landscape design. This last art ranges from massive Imperial gardens to the tiniest of Zen rock gardens. And as I found out in my trip to the southern island of Kyushu, there are Japanese masters alive today whose art is not landscape design but making art from the landscape itself. One such master is Tsuru Kazuyuki: he and his family practice/perfect the art of making green tea.

The Tsuru Cha En plantation, located on the Chigiriyama mountain of the Saga prefecture in Kyushu, has the ideal weather (with thick fog) for growing the most delicious and healthy green tea. Generations of family members have cultivated this land; eighty percent of the green tea bushes are over fifty years old. No pesticides are used: though incredibly difficult to accomplish, and unlike most of the green tea sold in Japan, the sencha grown here is organic.

What brought me to this idyllic tea farm, in an off-the-beaten track corner of Japan?

Ikkyu, an international Kyushu green tea distributor (and who I have used for over five years to order incredible varieties of green tea) was gracious enough to arrange a visit to Tsuru Kazuyuki’s tea farm.  Lilly and Katy from Ikkyu, my friendly and wonderful guide/translators, joined my husband and I in a visit to the tea farm.  We had traveled from Kyoto by Nozomi Shinkansen, and then by local train to a stop where the newest generation of tea-growing artists, Kazuyuki’s son, drove us to the farm itself. Kazuyuki’s family was equally kind and accommodating (we even joked about the recent highs and lows in recent news about the Dodger’s new baseball star Shohei Ohtani).

But after brief introductions, we drove out to the five hectares of rolling, manicured tea hedges. We rubbed the luxuriant soil between our fingers, walked on its spongelike consistency, and watched the sun backlight the translucent tea leaves.

Kazuyuki and his son then stepped us through the quasi-mechanized process of harvesting the leaves and preparing them for consumption (much is still manual). As a native of Sonoma County, it reminded me of the viniculture processes that I had grown up with. Both required a keen attunement to nature, and a generationally-honed talent for nurturing its bounty – in one case grapes, in the Tsuru family’s case, tea leaves – into transcendently wonderful, uniquely human, works of art.

I am so grateful to Ikkyu tea distributors and the Tsuru Kazuyuki family who both allowed me the opportunity to really experience how a world-class tea is grown and crafted. The two types of tea that I order from Ikkyu that come from this farm are Kazuya, an organic sencha with balanced flavors, and Kazuhiro, a gyokuro (this rare tea is grown in shade to preserve antioxidant properties) with sweet like honey, slightly bitter and floral flavors.

Ordering these and other teas and tea-related products from Ikkyu is extremely easy: just click here on

Ikkyu-Premium Japanese Green Tea & Matcha

So why is Vitality Fusion devoting so much space to a blog about green tea?

According to many recent research sources, like Medical News Today, Healthline and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, green tea has numerous documented health benefits: they include a reduction in the risk of cardiovascular disease, support for cognitive function, a decrease in tooth decay, and even a possible reduction in blood sugar.  Who doesn’t want a strong heart, sharp mind, stabilized blood sugar and beautiful smile?  Perhaps most important, green tea contains antioxidant properties via polyphenols to protect against oxidative stress, a leading cause of plaque buildup in the arteries.

Thank you Ikkyu and thank you the Tsuru family for providing us with this powerful AntIoxidant, with all of its complex benefits wrapped in a deceptively simple outer layer of gentle sencha flavor. And thank you for reminding us in the process that there are human artisan masters whose soul and genius will never be replaced.

Note: There has been no promotional consideration of any type received from Ikkyu or the Tsuru family.