Shizuoka

Shizuoka Prefecture, on Honshu's Pacific coast at the foot of Mt. Fuji, is Japan's largest tea producer — historically supplying around 40% of the national crop. The Yabukita cultivar (which accounts for roughly 75–85% of all Japanese tea production) was bred here by Sugiyama Hikosaburo in 1908; about 90% of Shizuoka's tea fields are still planted with Yabukita today. The prefecture's sencha is the canonical reference cup against which all other Japanese sencha is judged.