Author Archives: The Japan Agricultural News

TOKYO, Oct. 19 – The qualifier race for the 102nd Tokyo-Hakone Round-Trip College Ekiden Race (Hakone Ekiden) was held in Tachikawa City, Tokyo, and Tokyo University of Agriculture (TUA) successfully qualified for the 2026 Hakone Ekiden main race for the 71st time, or the first time in two years. The team placed in the 6th, cheered by the university’s iconic Daikon Dance (radish dance). They avenged a loss in the 2025 qualifying race by just a second. Ten universities with the lowest combined times of the top 10 runners in the half-marathon (21.0975 km) earned spots to compete in the main tournament on January 2nd and 3rd next year, out … Continue reading →

IBARAKI, Oct. 13 – Speedia Co., Ltd. (Chuo Ward, Tokyo), a subsidiary of one of Japan’s largest gyudon beef bowl restaurant chains, Yoshinoya Holdings Co., Ltd., is raising approximately 500 ostriches in Ishioka City, Ibaraki Prefecture. Ostrich meat, a red meat low in fat and rich in iron, is often compared to beef in taste and texture. The farm has set its sights on promoting it as “the 4th meat” in Japan, a potential new favorite alongside beef, pork, and chicken. In its 3.5-hectare farm, Speedia has approximately 40 rectangular fields, each 30 to 40 meters long, to house Japan’s largest number of ostriches. In the fields, which Speedia calls … Continue reading →

TOKYO, Oct. 11 — A professor of Shizuoka University is advocating a theory that the population on the Japanese archipelago grew during the Jomon Period, spanning from approximately 13,000 B.C. to 400 B.C., before the introduction of rice farming, because people at the time — mainly hunter-gatherers — were eating nutritious taro. Reiko Motohashi, a professor at Shizuoka University’s faculty of agriculture, came to the conclusion after closely investigating the historic roots of wild taro growing across the country and believing that it had been brought in to Japan earlier than other taro plant varieties currently cultivated and had been consumed by the Jomon people. Taro, which is easily degradable, … Continue reading →

IWATE, Oct. 6 — Rin Horie, 24, of the city of Kuji, Iwate Prefecture, is a “three-way” player, working at a cattle farm and a butcher shop and also as a seko bull handler for local traditional bullfighting matches. The former village of Yamagata in Iwate Prefecture, now part of Kuji, has been known as a major producing region of Japanese Shorthorn cattle. “Congratulations, Rin!” people called out in early September, as Horie, dressed in a white shiromuku bridal kimono, appeared at the Hiraniwa Kogen Bullring in the city filled with some 1,000 spectators and a fighting bull weighing a ton. Horie herself came up with the idea of holding … Continue reading →

NAGANO, Oct. 1 – On the day of sake (October 1) in Japan, the Saku Branch of the Nagano Sake Brewery Association unveiled a pioneering project to brew sake, the traditional Japanese rice wine, using rice, “koji” mold, and sake yeast that will be returned from space. The seed rice, ideal for sake brewing, koji and such will be stored in the International Space Station (ISS) for a specific period and then brought back to Earth for cultivation for the brewers to craft “Space Sake” by 2030. The Saku Branch’s initiative, the Saku Sake Mission, of brewing sake from rice that has journeyed to space is a tribute to the … Continue reading →