Sayama tea is grown in a cool pocket of Saitama, west of Tokyo. The fields are small by Japanese standards, the leaf comes out thick, and most of it never leaves Japan.
出川園 sits in that pocket. The shop is in Iruma, at 129 Hananoki, a short walk from the Kanekodai tea fields that are the heart of Sayama production. Owner Tatsuya Degawa and his team finish and pack the tea there: first-pick sencha, single-serve pouches such as Karen, Yumeha, and Akane, gift boxes, kukicha, and Sayama black tea. In Japan they already sell to customers across the country, from the shop counter and from their online store. Outside Japan, they have had no real shelf and no distributor.
That is the gap we fill.
We are the US distributor for 出川園, based in Long Beach, California. The teas on this site are the same lots packed in Iruma, not a private-label blend and not a reprint of a supermarket sencha. We hold stock here so a gift set does not have to clear customs from Saitama every time someone in the US wants a cup.
Sayama is easy to miss if you only know Uji or Shizuoka. Cooler winters push the bush to grow a thicker leaf, and the cup is deeper than a light first-flush from further south. 出川園’s own note on the garden is simple: the fields are vast up close, the national crop is small, and the tea is worth sending farther than the Kanto region. We agree, and we are the first dedicated stop for it in the United States.
Orders ship from Long Beach. Questions about harvest, brewing, or a gift set come to us. The garden, the finishing, and the name on the pouch stay with 出川園.