Evidently tea farming is a very difficult business to get started in, because the tea bushes have to be about ten years old before they start yielding ‘good quality’ tea leaves. So I guess you have to go into a lot of debt before you are able to start paying anything back.

Anyway, when I was a missionary in the small Shizuoka town of Fukuroi, we would often go on random biking adventures to small little villiages that seemed forgotten by time itself. Being missionaries, we would always stop and talk with people, and we met some of the nicest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting anywhere. (Also some of the most difficult to understand Japanese of anyone I’d met anywhere) Some of these people acted as if they had never seen a caucasian except for TV, and it may not have been an exaggeration. They were never particularly interested in Christianity, but they were always willing to talk for a few minutes, and sometimes would give us a drink, a snack, or even a whole meal as befits rural hospitality, which is unfortunately in low supply these days.