- Wazuka, a tea town of roughly 4,000 people south of Kyoto, grows more tea than anywhere else in the prefecture — about 40 percent of what is sold as Uji tea — and several of its working matcha farms now host overnight guests.
- The most complete package is d:matcha’s Tea Moon: a renovated 80-year-old farmhouse sleeping 2–4 guests at ¥77,000 per night, with multi-course farm-to-table dinner and breakfast plus the farm’s ¥35,000 tea tour included.
- At Enu To Enu, run by the tea-farming Kita family, you pick leaves from freshly cut branches before dinner and eat them as tempura in a ¥3,500 tea-course meal.
- Visit from late April through May to catch the shading canopies and first-flush tencha harvest — the leaves destined to become matcha.
- Book direct and early: Wazuka has almost no taxis, the d:matcha shuttle from Ishiyama Station runs only on tour mornings, and Tea Moon closes bookings 14 days out for free cancellation.
Most travelers experience matcha in Uji: an ice cream cone near Byodo-in, a caddy of powder, then the train back to Kyoto. The tea itself grows one valley south, in Wazuka — where a handful of farming families now open their farmhouse doors to overnight guests. A matcha farm stay puts you inside the working landscape: tencha factories humming through May, shading nets over the rows, dawn mist moving along tea terraces that day-trippers never see. This guide covers the named stays you can actually book, current prices, harvest timing, and the transport quirks that catch first-timers.
Why Wazuka Is Japan’s Matcha Farm-Stay Capital
Wazuka-cho sits in the Soraku district of southern Kyoto Prefecture, about an hour from Kyoto Station by train and bus. Tea has been planted here since the Kamakura period (1192–1333), and the town — population around 4,000 — produces the largest quantity of tea in Kyoto Prefecture, according to the prefecture’s Yamashiro regional office. Because leaf grown here has historically been finished and traded through Uji merchants, roughly 40 percent of what reaches shops labeled as Uji tea starts in Wazuka’s valleys.
The terroir explains the concentration of quality. Farms like d:matcha credit Wazuka’s microclimate — sharp day-night temperature swings, morning mists channeled along the river valleys, and mineral-rich mountain soil — for the deep umami in local tencha, the shaded leaf that is stone-milled into matcha. Tea fields climb the hillsides in close-planted rows rather than spreading across flat estates, which is why photographs of Wazuka look more like green corduroy draped over mountains than farmland.
There is a quieter reason farm stays exist here: depopulation. Outflow to cities left Yubune hamlet with vacant traditional houses, and tea companies now renovate them for guests — part hospitality, part rural revival. Sleeping in one funds that effort.
Tea Moon: d:matcha’s Whole-House Farm Stay
Tea Moon is the flagship matcha farm stay in Japan right now. d:matcha, an organic single-origin tea producer in Yubune, spent the summer of 2023 fully renovating an 80-year-old vacant farmhouse that stands beside the roughly 1,000-year-old Hakusan Shrine, keeping the historic timber exterior while rebuilding the interior for comfort. Guests get the entire house: two bedrooms with Western queen beds, two tatami living rooms, a kitchen with new appliances, and a Japanese soaking tub supplied with the farm’s handmade tea bath soaks. Tea fields fill the view from the windows.
The ¥77,000 nightly rate covers the whole house for 2–4 guests and the full tea experience: a multi-course farm-to-table dinner at 6:00pm, breakfast at 8:00am (both built around the farm’s own rice, vegetables, and tea), and complimentary access to d:matcha’s signature tea farm tour, which sells separately at ¥35,000 per person. Split four ways with the tour included, the math works out far better than the headline number suggests.
Practical details: check-in 3:00pm with key pickup at the d:matcha cafe (Gonose 142, Yubune, Wazuka-cho), check-out 11:00am, no smoking, all guests must be over age 5, and dietary preferences are handled by email in advance. Cancellation is free up to 14 days before the stay or within 24 hours of booking; after that the full cost is forfeited. Guests staying two nights or more unlock extra on-site activities, and the team will arrange countryside add-ons on request.
Enu To Enu: Sleep at the Kita Family’s Tea Farm
On the other side of Wazuka, in Nakasugadani, the Kita family — tea farmers for generations — converted their old private house into The Tea Farm Guest House Enu To Enu, open since July 2017 and listed on Kyoto’s official tourism platform. This is the stay to choose if you want the family, not just the fields: Kazuo, the father, is a tea producer; Kyoko, the mother, is a certified Japanese tea instructor; and daughter Masako cooks the meals.
The signature moment comes before dinner, when guests hand-pick leaves from specially prepared cut tea branches in the tatami room. Those same leaves open the meal as tempura, the first of a Japanese tea-course dinner (¥3,500) in which nearly every dish uses tea. Over the evening you can taste from among more than 20 tea types grown in the family garden while the Kitas explain what you are drinking. Tea harvesting sessions, tea factory tours, and black-tea-making workshops are available for an additional fee, with activities varying by farming season. Check-in is 4:00pm, check-out 10:00am, and booking is direct by phone (080-3867-8884) — a good task for your hotel concierge if you do not speak Japanese.
More Wazuka Guesthouses Recommended by the Farms
Kyoto Obubu Tea Farms does not run its own lodging but publishes a shortlist of recommended guesthouses — mentioning Obubu when you book may earn small extra services.
Blodget Lodge is a hillside B&B run by a Japanese-American family, with traditional tatami guest rooms overlooking the town’s tea fields and home-cooked macrobiotic meals. Country Home ATSUAN, opened in July 2019 by Atsuko and Tetsuji, takes one group at a time in a traditional house surrounded by tea fields; Atsuko is a professional potter, and guests can try her craft as well as her cooking. Wazuka-So builds the whole stay around tea for all five senses — good local tea in the cup, a tea bath, tea candles, and tea woven through the meals. A fourth pick, Shiki guesthouse, sits in a neighboring town between Kyoto and Nara.
Comparing Japan’s Matcha Farm Stays
| Stay | Style | Tea experience included | How to book |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tea Moon (d:matcha) | Whole renovated farmhouse, sleeps 2–4 | Farm tour, tencha factory visit, farm-to-table dinner and breakfast | Direct on dmatcha.com |
| Enu To Enu | Family-run farmhouse inn | Pre-dinner leaf picking, tea-course dinner, 20+ garden teas to taste | Direct by phone |
| Blodget Lodge | Hillside family B&B | Tea-field views, macrobiotic home cooking | Direct; mention Obubu |
| Country Home ATSUAN | Private house, one group at a time | Tea-field setting plus pottery with the host | Direct; mention Obubu |
| Wazuka-So | Tea-themed guesthouse | Tea bath, tea meals, tea in every room | Direct; mention Obubu |
The Tea Experiences: What You Actually Do
d:matcha’s four-hour tour (9:30am–1:30pm, conducted in English, ¥35,000 per person, free for Tea Moon guests) is the deepest tea education in the valley. Founder Daiki walks you through the organic fields and up the mountain path to Hakusan Shrine, then into the company’s in-house tencha factory — the only matcha factory in Wazuka that opens to visitors. During harvest season the machines process hundreds of kilograms of leaf a day; you also try grinding tencha on a traditional stone mill, hand-pick leaves that reappear as tempura at lunch, and taste six single-origin teas (three matcha, three sencha) guided by certified Japanese tea instructors before a farm-to-table lunch. Cancellation is free within 24 hours of booking or up to 7 days out; inside 7 days, bookings are final.
Kyoto Obubu Tea Farms runs a gentler four-hour guided tea tour for a maximum of six people at ¥12,000 per person: about 90 minutes among the tea fields, a 30-minute lunch, and a full two hours of tasting that runs from everyday houjicha and genmaicha up to premium sencha and matcha, with tea sweets and small gifts included. Between activities, Wazuka rewards aimless walking — the lanes between tea rows are public, and cafes such as Yamajin Wazuka Chaya (matcha ice cream) and the hilltop Wazuka-cha Cafe, 165 meters up with a panorama over the fields, make good waypoints.
When to Go: Timing the Matcha Harvest
Matcha starts as tencha, and tencha is a spring crop. From mid-to-late April, farmers stretch shading canopies over the rows for roughly 20–30 days, starving the leaves of light to concentrate chlorophyll and L-theanine — this is when the fields take on their strange, tented look. The first flush is picked from late April through May, and first-harvest tencha comes off the bushes mainly in May, which makes that month the single best time to stay: factories run daily, picking experiences use real harvest leaf, and the new fields glow almost fluorescent green.
| Season | What is happening on the farms | Stay experience |
|---|---|---|
| Mid-April–May | Shading canopies up; first-flush and tencha harvest | Peak — book weeks ahead |
| June–August | Summer harvests and processing continue | Lush green fields, fewer visitors |
| September–November | Autumn field work, clear air | Best walking and photography weather |
| December–March | Fields dormant and pruned | Quietest rates and tea-bath season |
Farm-stay activities shift with this calendar — Enu To Enu explicitly varies its offerings by season, and d:matcha’s factory is quiet outside harvest (tours still go inside, with the machinery explained). If seeing processing in motion matters to you, aim for May; our seasonal guide to tea plantations maps how Japan’s harvest windows compare with other countries’.
Getting to Wazuka (Read This Before You Book)
Wazuka has no train station, and taxis are scarce to nonexistent in the valley — the two facts that shape every itinerary. For d:matcha and Tea Moon, the recommended route is rail to Ishiyama Station in neighboring Shiga (about 15 minutes from Kyoto Station on the JR Biwako Line; about 40 minutes from Osaka), then the farm’s own shuttle from the station’s North Gate. It departs at 8:45am sharp on tour mornings, takes 40 minutes, costs ¥1,500 each way (¥3,000 round trip), and needs no reservation; the return shuttle leaves at 1:45pm. Miss it and a taxi from Ishiyama runs about ¥9,000 one way — and returns must be arranged in advance, since drivers do not wait in Wazuka.
For Obubu, Enu To Enu, and the central-Wazuka guesthouses, the public-transport route is JR to Kamo Station, then a Nara Kotsu bus about 20 minutes into the valley (Higashi-Wazuka stop for Obubu’s area). A direct taxi from Kyoto Station costs around ¥15,000 and takes about an hour. Renting a car is the most flexible option — d:matcha has free parking — and pairs well with a stop in Uji on the way; see our Uji tea fields day trip guide for how to stack the two.
Costs and Booking: What a Matcha Farm Stay Runs
| Item | Price (JPY) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Tea Moon farmhouse, per night | ¥77,000 | Whole house for 2–4 guests; dinner, breakfast, and farm tour included |
| d:matcha farm tour and tasting | ¥35,000 per person | 4 hours; free for Tea Moon guests |
| Obubu guided tea tour | ¥12,000 per person | 4 hours, max 6 people, lunch and gifts included |
| Enu To Enu tea-course meal | ¥3,500 | Multi-dish tea cuisine at the guesthouse |
| d:matcha shuttle, Ishiyama Station | ¥1,500 one way | 8:45am departure, tour days only |
| Taxi Ishiyama–Wazuka / Kyoto–Wazuka | ~¥9,000 / ~¥15,000 | Book return taxis in advance |
Three booking rules keep the trip smooth. Book direct — d:matcha declines travel-agency reservations. Watch the cancellation clocks: Tea Moon is free to cancel only up to 14 days out, d:matcha tours lock 7 days out. And confirm dinner at your stay when you book; Wazuka has no late-night food scene. Budget travelers who cannot stretch to a farm stay can still sleep near the tea: Japan’s boutique tea hotels in Kyoto city and beyond deliver the tea-first philosophy at more conventional price points, minus the working fields outside the window.
Related Guides
- Japan Tea Travel Guide: Uji, Kyoto & Shizuoka
- Types of Japanese Green Tea: From Sencha to Gyokuro
- A Beginner’s Guide to the Japanese Tea Ceremony (Chanoyu)
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does a matcha farm stay in Japan cost?
Expect ¥77,000 per night for Tea Moon, d:matcha’s whole-house farmhouse in Wazuka, which includes farm-to-table dinner, breakfast, and a tea tour otherwise priced at ¥35,000 per person. Shared among four guests that is under ¥20,000 each. Smaller family guesthouses such as Enu To Enu charge less, with tea-course meals at ¥3,500.
Where can you stay overnight on a matcha farm in Japan?
Wazuka, the town in southern Kyoto Prefecture that grows about 40 percent of Uji tea, has the main cluster: Tea Moon by d:matcha, the Kita family’s Enu To Enu, Blodget Lodge, Country Home ATSUAN, and Wazuka-So. All are working tea-farm or tea-themed guesthouses within the valley, and all take direct bookings.
When is the best time to visit a matcha farm in Wazuka?
May is the best month, when first-flush tencha — the leaf that becomes matcha — is harvested and factories process leaf daily. Shading canopies go up from mid-to-late April for 20–30 days before picking, a sight unique to matcha regions. Autumn offers the clearest walking weather; winter is dormant but quiet and cheap.
How do you get to Wazuka from Kyoto without a car?
Take the JR Biwako Line to Ishiyama Station (15 minutes) for d:matcha’s 8:45am shuttle, which reaches the farm in 40 minutes for ¥1,500. Alternatively, ride JR to Kamo Station and catch a Nara Kotsu bus about 20 minutes into the valley. Total journey time is around an hour; taxis in Wazuka itself are rare, so plan returns in advance.
Can you pick tea during a matcha farm stay?
Yes — leaf picking is built into the main Wazuka experiences. Enu To Enu guests pick from freshly cut branches before dinner and eat their harvest as tempura, while d:matcha’s tour includes field handpicking plus stone-milling tencha into matcha. Offerings track the farming calendar, so harvest-season stays (late April through May) get the most hands-on work.