Category Archives: Others

TOYAMA, Dec. 1 – Pairs of socks sold by Sukeno Co., Ltd., a socks manufacturer based in Takaoka City, Toyama Prefecture, are selling well. The “Sushi Socks,” which look like sushi when rolled up, are popular, particularly among inbound tourists, and the company has sold 220,000 pairs so far. There are nine types, including ikura fish eggs, tako octopus, and masu-zushi, traditional sushi in Toyama made using sliced trout or cherry salmon. The manufacturer uses white yarn for rice parts and yarns in five to six colors for sushi ingredient parts so that they look tactile. By rolling and tucking a sock in its cuff, you can make it look … Continue reading →

TOKYO, Nov. 4 — A building material for interiors using soil from vegetable fields was created and used at a store in Tokyo. The material is produced by casting clay into forms and drying them just like sun-dried bricks. It can absorb and release humidity, and also has the ability to fix carbon. It is an eco-friendly material that can also be crushed and reused. Imomatsu, a food store in Tokyo, requested an architect to develop the material in order to make its interiors match the store’s goal of promoting the attractiveness of the vegetables it sells. The architect created the material using soil taken from fields in the town … Continue reading →

TOKYO, May 28 – Giving silver vines to cats? Yes, but lisianthus flowers can also make your cats happy. The National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO) has published that lisianthus flowers possess scent components like iridoids and actinidine, like silver vine, which attract cats. This is the first time these components have been found in the types of flowers sold as cut flowers. This property will likely become a new advantage of lisianthus, which is already famous for its wide variety of colors and shapes and good keeping quality. NARO analyzed 13 breeds, including New Lination White, with a weak, sweet scent. Then, 36 chemical compounds, including iridoids and … Continue reading →

KANAGAWA, Jan. 5 – Tokyo University of Agriculture returned to this year’s Hakone Ekiden (Tokyo-Hakone Round Trip University Ekiden Race) for the first time in ten years in the year of the 100th anniversary of the annual athletic event. So did the iconic dancing of the university’s cheering squad. The dance is called Aoyama Hotori or more commonly, Daikon Odori (Japanese radish dance). A farmer who provided the radishes for the dance and a teacher who helped the cheering group members grow radishes praised the runners for completing the race and the cheering group for supporting the runners, saying they were proud of them. The farmer in Kokubunji City, Tokyo, … Continue reading →