Category: Elsewhere

Before the Cup

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Gifu, Japan
Summer · May 2025

Everyone knows green tea. Far fewer have had the privilege of standing among rows of tea bushes, handpicking tender leaves, and getting hands-on experience turning those freshly plucked leaves into tea or grinding processed tea leaves into matcha powder.

The day began rather unremarkably. I came across an Instagram post about a green tea harvesting tour and forwarded it to H without giving it much thought. Knowing how his roster worked and how understaffed they were, I wasn’t holding out much hope that he would be able to get time off at such short notice. But one day, he surprised me by asking if I was genuinely interested in the tour, because he could spare the time to go with me. I don’t think I’ve ever nodded my head so enthusiastically.

And, as they say, the rest was history.

Ours was a small group of just eight participants, plus the tour guide. We had sworn off guided group tours two decades ago, and approached this one with some trepidation, fervently hoping we wouldn’t have to put up with inconsiderate tour mates again. As it turned out, our prayers were answered and then some. I suppose I shouldn’t have been too surprised; perhaps a niche interest tour like this tends to attract well-travelled individuals who share a genuine appreciation for the experience and a certain consideration for their fellow travellers.

Shirakawa-cho, not to be confused with Shirakawa-go, famous for its thatched-roof houses, is nestled in the mountains of Gifu Prefecture. Nearby Mino is renowned for its traditional washi paper. Unlike Uji, whose tea enjoys widespread recognition, Shirakawa-cho remains off the beaten track for most visitors. In fact, our visit was such a rarity that we even made it into the local news!

Shirakawa-cho produces some fine green tea, albeit on a modest scale. Being complete amateurs, we weren’t entrusted with plucking leaves from the hillside plantations. Instead, our first taste of tea picking took place in a small tea field beside the car park in the town centre. It looked easy enough, but picking tea leaves was hard work. For us city dwellers, it was certainly no walk in the park. And that wasn’t even counting the mosquito bite on my temple, which swelled to worrying proportions. Yes, a foreign mosquito left me with an infection.

We were even provided with traditional tea-picking costumes

We had a full two days of immersive, hands-on experience. After plucking the tender tea leaves, we went through the entire process of making kamiiricha, pan-roasting the leaves in a large iron pan. We weren’t quite using our bare hands, but the fabric gloves provided so little protection from the heat that it sometimes felt as though we were!

And just when I thought the worst was over, we moved on to yet another method of tea-making: temomicha, or hand-rolled tea. Throughout the day, we took turns hunching over the heated work station, under the watchful eye of an award-winning artisan. She offered pointers along the way, often stepping in to take over before we could do too much damage to the precious tea leaves. Her gentle manner really touched me, especially since we weren’t exactly doing a stellar job. Well, I wasn’t, anyway. H, on the other hand, seemed to have a natural knack for it!

The tea masters were kinda fixing the mess we created 😆

Of all the activities, I much preferred stone-grinding tencha into bright green matcha powder, partly because I love drinking matcha (nope, I’m not going to admit that the fact that this was the easiest of all the tasks might also have had something to do with it). It was quite amazing to watch the transformation and fascinating to think that those dark green leaves could yield such a vivid green powder!

It looked deceptively easy to turn this granite mill it wasn’t easy. We were also told we should turn at a slow, steady speed to mill fine matcha powder.

And oh, did I mention that we also had a tea master come by to teach us how to prepare and enjoy our matcha in a simple Japanese tea ceremony? And as if that wasn’t enough, we ended the day with a tea-tasting workshop, sampling so, so many different types of tea. By then, we had certainly earned our stripes as tea enthusiasts!

We left Shirakawa-cho the next morning with a deeper appreciation for the humble cup of green tea — something so readily available on supermarket shelves, yet the product of so much care, skill, hard work and pride in one’s craft.

If this tour sounds like your cup of tea, it’s organised by Kitabi Travel, and I believe Heidi runs it annually in early summer. And no, this isn’t an advertisement — just a genuinely enjoyable experience worth sharing!

Getting into It

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You hear all about the magic of a hot-air balloon ride. Nobody ever mentions the awkward business of getting into the basket.

I found out the hard way.

The morning air was crisp and unexpectedly cold, despite it being the height of summer in southern France. We had driven for hours in the dark to get to the launch site, so by the time we arrived I was still only half awake, trying to work out where exactly we were. Around us, the pilots were already at work, laying out the enormous balloons and firing up the burners. Slowly, the colourful fabric began to fill with hot air, rising from the ground as the baskets were prepared.

Everyone else seemed captivated by the spectacle. I was too, at least initially, but somewhere between watching the balloons take shape and hearing the pilots explain what we were about to do, I became quietly aware of a more immediate problem.

I was wearing a dress.

I have a particular dress that I reserve for travel days involving long drives. It is comfortable, easy to wear and, in my mind, entirely appropriate for sitting in a car for several hours when I’m the driver. The journey to the launch site certainly qualified, so naturally, that was what I had chosen that morning since I was going to drive the leg back. It was only when we were getting ready to board that I discovered a small but rather important detail about hot-air balloon baskets: they don’t have doors. The only way in was to climb over the side.

Which is perfectly sensible when you’re wearing trousers. Less so when you’re wearing a dress.

I stood there for a moment, trying to work out whether there was some alternative entrance I had somehow missed. There wasn’t. The other passengers were already climbing in, while I contemplated the rather undignified manoeuvre that lay ahead of me. Eventually, with no other options available, I gathered up my dress and attempted to get myself over the side of the basket with as much dignity as the situation allowed.

Suffice it to say, it wasn’t my finest moment. My friends, sensing the seriousness of the situation, quietly gathered around me to provide what little privacy and dignity they could. I have no idea whether anyone else noticed. I prefer not to know.

Once I was finally inside, however, the whole thing became a non-issue. The burners roared, the basket lifted gently from the ground, and within minutes we were floating above the French countryside. The sun was just beginning to rise, casting a soft golden hue across the bucolic landscape. Below us, fields stretched out in every direction, including long bands of lavender glowing purple in the early morning light, with little villages and winding roads scattered between them.

Up there, there was no thought of dresses or awkward climbs. Everything was quiet and unhurried. We drifted above the countryside as the sun climbed higher, the lavender fields gradually brightening below us. From that height, the landscape seemed almost unreal — neat rows of fields, tiny houses and roads disappearing into the distance, all softened by the warm morning light. It was one of those experiences that made me wish I could slow time down.

Eventually, of course, the balloon had to come down. And that meant getting out. I had rather conveniently forgotten about this minor detail but unfortunately, there was no way out of it. Naturally getting out was every bit as graceful as getting in.

I would like to say it was easier the second time. It wasn’t. But after a morning like this, a little embarrassment seemed a small price to pay. I even managed to drop my Gucci sunnies while helping to pack up the balloon. Somehow, it still felt worth it.

What the Waves Remember

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Kōchi, Shikoku, Japan
Spring · Mar 2024

Standing before the raging waters of Kōchi, I lost myself for a moment in the fury of the waves. I stood there almost motionless, just watching them rise, break, and crash against the shore. For a while, I barely noticed anything else around me. My thoughts wandered—not really to the ocean itself, but to the people who had once set out into it. Fishermen who knew these waves not from a distance, but from within them.

The Pacific Ocean hurled itself relentlessly against the rocks. Strong winds tore at hats, scarves, and umbrellas. Parents instinctively held on to their young children as they stood watching. Cars pulled over along the coast, and strangers seemed to fall into the same quiet silence as I did, completely captivated by the raw force in front of us.

I shuddered, partly from the cold, but mostly from imagining what these waters must have been like centuries ago. Before modern engines and reinforced hulls. When fishing was not just a job, but a livelihood, and every time a boat left the shore, there was always the possibility of not coming back. How frightening it must have been.

Courage is not the absence,
But the conquest of fear.

For the first time, I understood courage a little differently.

It was not necessarily found in dramatic acts of heroism, but in ordinary people pushing their boats into a sea that frightened them because their families depended on it. Fear was never the opposite of courage. It was part of it.

Later, I learned more about the Nankai Trough, the offshore subduction zone capable of producing some of Japan’s most powerful earthquakes and tsunamis. Kōchi is among the prefectures most directly exposed to it. Knowing this added another layer to what I had already felt standing there. The people of Kōchi have lived for generations with the knowledge that the sea that sustains them can also threaten them.

Perhaps that is why what stayed with me was not really the violence of the waves, but the quiet resilience of the people who have learned to live alongside them. They do not conquer nature, but they do not surrender to it either. They simply carry on, with a deep respect for its power, accepting both what it gives and what it can take away.

The sea has given Kōchi an extraordinary abundance of seafood and shaped a culture deeply connected to it. But watching those waves, I began to think that every catch brought ashore carries with it generations of courage, perseverance and quiet resolve.

Long after the roar of the Pacific faded behind me, that memory was what stayed with me the longest.

When the Wind Became the Memory

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Copenhagen, Denmark
Winter · Feb 2026

We knew the Little Mermaid wasn’t far.

“Just a short walk from Nyhavn,” they said.

It was a mere 1.7km on paper, a perfectly manageable distance by any measure. But by the time we reached the Little Mermaid, I wasn’t thinking about Hans Christian Andersen anymore; I was wondering whether a nose could actually freeze off.

I knew Wellington, New Zealand, was famous for its winds. What I didn’t know was that Copenhagen could be just as relentless. And I certainly wasn’t expecting it to feel colder than Tromsø. It was, and my carefully packed winter wardrobe proved no match for the biting wind.

At some point, the hubs suggested we cut inland, or take an Uber. But I insisted we keep going. Apparently, I had become very committed to the Little Mermaid.

Suffice it to say, it was the longest and most painful 1.7km I’ve ever walked.

By the time we arrived, I simply couldn’t muster the same enthusiasm as everyone else gathered around the monument. I was cold, miserable, nursing a headache—and, as it turned out, my nose hadn’t frozen off. I just couldn’t feel it anymore.

The face of someone questioning every life choice that led to this 1.7km walk.

Maybe it was the biting wind talking, but I found the Little Mermaid surprisingly underwhelming. She was much smaller than I’d expected, and the skyline was more smokestacks than storybook. It wasn’t exactly the fairy-tale setting I’d imagined.

In retrospect, I probably should have listened to the man and saved myself the misery.