At the city-wide level, tea fields, tea culture, landscapes and everyday history sit side by side in Iruma. Highlights include a private tea terrace, an annual new tea festival, a 360-degree panorama and the ALIT Museum, with exhibitions on tea, nature and homes. This mix can help you choose the focus of your trip: a booked tea experience, a deeper look around the museum or landscape views with a cultural backdrop.
Sayama Tea Between the Tea Fields and the Festival
Tea Field Terrace Chanowa (茶畑テラス「茶の輪」) is set amid expansive tea fields and is a paid facility available for exclusive rental. Advance reservations are required. The 90-minute private session includes tea and tea sweets; plans are available that are tailored to the distinctive features of the tea houses and the season. As a tourism experience in Iruma, Chanowa invites visitors to enjoy Sayama tea with all five senses. As reservation policies and offerings may change, check the current arrangements with the operator in advance.
The Hachijuhachiya New Tea Festival offers a different setting: it is held every year in the tea field at Iruma City Hall. While Chanowa offers a reserved private experience, the festival is a recurring event celebrating the new tea. Check the event dates before your trip if you would like to plan your visit around it.
Panoramas and Satoyama Landscapes
From the Sakurayama Observation Deck, a 360-degree panorama takes in the tea fields of Kanekodai, the mountain ranges of Chichibu and Tama, Mount Fuji and the Kantō Plain. The sweeping view brings tea cultivation, mountain landscapes and the broad expanse of the plain together in a single panorama.
The Kaji Hills offer a different perspective on the landscape. This natural area is home to a wide variety of wild animals and plants, and is a satoyama landscape that has long been closely connected with people’s lives. For local residents, the hills are both a symbol and a familiar, traditional image of the city’s landscape. Along with the notable panoramic features, nature and the relationship between the landscape and human life are therefore also part of what Iruma has to offer.
Tea, Nature and Everyday Life at the ALIT Museum
The permanent exhibition “茶の世界” (The World of Tea) at the ALIT Museum explains the spread of tea around the world. It presents local Sayama tea alongside tea from Japan and other parts of the world. This places the region’s focus on tea in a broader context, while also showing that the museum’s scope extends beyond tea.
The permanent exhibition also explores Iruma’s natural environment and geology. It includes a diorama of the Kaji Hills forest and the footprint fossils of an Akebono elephant, discovered in the Iruma River. Other exhibits feature different types of homes: sections of a farmhouse from the early Shōwa period and a home from a new residential development around 1965 have been recreated at full scale.
At the Science Bar, members of the museum’s volunteer team offer demonstrations and craft activities on almost every first Saturday of the month. The museum grounds also include a restaurant serving tea-based dishes. The city’s offerings thus pair exhibitions and activities about tea and nature with a complementary culinary experience.
A Chapter on Silk Spinning
The Old Ishikawa Silk Mill Western House adds the history of the silk industry to these themes. The Ishikawa Silk Mill had the Western-style wooden building constructed about 100 years ago as a reception hall for foreign merchants. From the Meiji era to the early Shōwa period, the silk mill was nationally significant. Its architectural style and original function thus point to a different chapter of the city’s history from the present-day story of Sayama tea.
Discover more destinations: Chichibu, Minano, Hanyū, Yoshimi, Ranzan, Satte, Sayama, Ogawa
For the wider travel overview: Saitama Prefecture.
