Shizuoka
Japan’s largest tea-producing prefecture by planted area and the home of the Yabukita cultivar, supplying much of the everyday sencha and bancha drunk in the country.
Elevation
Recorded at 20–800 metres.
How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it.
When it is picked
Ichibancha through late April and into early May, later than Kyushu and earlier than the Kanto districts, with nibancha in June and a sanbancha and autumn pick after it in the warmer parts of the prefecture. The traditional marker is the eighty-eighth night counted from the start of spring, which lands close to the opening of Shizuoka's first pick and is why the phrase is attached to this prefecture more than to any other.
How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it.
How production is organised
Thousands of small family farms, a dense network of co-operative and merchant processors, and a division of labour most foreign buyers never see: the grower makes aracha — steamed, rolled, dried crude tea — and a merchant fires, sorts, cuts and blends it into the finished product. Shizuoka is the country's blending capital as much as its growing one, which means a great deal of tea sold under the prefecture's name was finished here rather than grown here.
How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it.
How the name is written
Also transliterated as shizuoka. Romanisations of a district name vary by system and by vendor, and a packet spelling one way is not describing a different place.
Teas this region is known for
- Sencha — Vegetal and savoury at once. Brewed cool it leans sweet and broth-like; brewed hot it turns sharply astringent, which is the single most common way people decide they dislike green tea.
Other teas recorded from here
Other growing regions in Japan
The neighbouring districts are the useful comparison: they share a country, a grading convention and often a cultivar, so what differs between them is closer to terroir than anything a cross-border comparison can isolate.
Sources
- TeaHQ editorial synthesis — TeaHQ
This page is TeaHQ’s own synthesis throughout. No external document stands behind the elevation band, the climate note or the character described above, which is why each carries its confidence in the open.
Written comparisons
Where TeaHQ has set this region against something it is routinely confused with, and argued the differences out in full.
- Enshi vs Shizuoka — The only meaningful comparison between a Chinese and a Japanese region in this batch, and it exists because Enshi is the exception that makes the rule legible: it is the last place in China making steamed green tea at scale.
- Sayama vs Shizuoka — Sayama is the northern edge of commercial tea growing in Japan, and everything about its tea follows from the cold. Thicker leaves, a distinctive finishing fire and a cultivar bred to survive winter all come from the same constraint.
- Shizuoka vs Kagoshima — Japan’s two largest tea prefectures by planted area, and the contrast between them is one of terrain and of era rather than of quality. Shizuoka is the historic centre and the home of Yabukita; Kagoshima is the modern one, and it harvests weeks earlier.