Region · in Japan
Nara
Nara grows its tea on the Yamato plateau, inland and high enough to be genuinely cold, and sells it as Yamato-cha. It carries one of the oldest planting traditions in Japan and one of the smallest reputations, and those two facts connect through a third: Nara sits directly across the boundary from the Uji hill towns, and a great deal of its leaf goes to Kyoto to be finished and sold under Kyoto's name.
What grows here
Yamato-cha, which is a prefectural name rather than a style: sencha, bancha and kabusecha off the plateau, with tencha for matcha taking a growing share as demand moved that way. Tsukigase and Yamazoe, in the northeast toward the Kyoto and Mie borders, are the districts that matter, and they are the ones closest to the Uji growing country. A substantial part of the crop is bought by Kyoto houses and finished there.
The ground
The Yamato plateau, an inland upland running roughly between 200 and 500 m, with cold nights, a real late-frost risk and no coast anywhere near enough to moderate either. It is the classic Japanese aromatic-tea setting of fog and temperature swing, and it is continuous with the hill country across the border where Uji's leaf actually grows. The line on the map is a prefectural boundary rather than a change in the ground.
What to look for
Nara's problem is Mie's problem. The Kyoto trade's definition of Uji tea admits Nara-grown leaf provided a Kyoto firm finishes it inside Kyoto, and Nara sits right against the Uji hill towns, so much of its leaf leaves under another name. Yamato-cha is what to look for if you want the prefecture stated and Tsukigase or Yamazoe if you want the district. None of the three is a quality grade, and none of them is a term a Kyoto merchant has any reason to print.
How it got here
By tradition the first tea seed in Japan came back from Tang China with the monk Kukai and went into the ground at Butsuryuji in Uda, early in the ninth century. That is an older date than the Eisai planting Saga traces itself to and it rests on the same kind of temple tradition, so treat both as tradition rather than as record. What is not in dispute is that Nara was the capital when tea first arrived from China as a courtly and monastic habit, and that the plateau has grown it for centuries without ever building a trading name to match Uji's next door.
Places in Nara
Named places inside Nara. The ones with a page of their own are links.