In 1504 a potter from Ming China named Ko Reimin arrived in Ureshino with a Nanjing kiln and, with it, the method of roasting tea leaves in a pan that was current in China at the time. That is where the local tea is said to begin. About a hundred and fifty years later Yoshimura Shinbei cleared forest on Fudosan, planted tea, revised the process, and made it a producing region rather than a curiosity.

What comes out of here is tamaryokucha. It skips the seiju stage, the final rolling that straightens the leaf into needles, so the leaves stay curled into little commas. In the pot they open slowly, unwinding rather than swelling.

Most of what is made in Ureshino now is the steamed version rather than the roasted one. The original roasted style has become a small fraction of production, around five percent of a region that is itself a small fraction of the country's tea.

The land is gentle hill country and the mornings bring fog off the slopes, which puts just enough water on the new leaves. The gap between day and night temperature is credited with giving the tea its definition. Five hundred years on, the shape of the leaf still records how a kiln arrived here.