Category Archives: Others

Construction material created using soil from vegetable fields

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

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Lisianthus flowers have scent components that attract cats like silvervine: NARO’s research reveals

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

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Non-standard strawberries used in skincare facial masks in central Japan

FUKUI, Feb. 9 — ICHIGOOJI, a strawberry farm in Sakai, Fukui Prefecture, put on sale 3D facial masks containing strawberry extract as skincare ingredient. The farm came up with its own compound of ingredients for the masks to increase their skin-conditioning effects, making use of extract from non-standard strawberries. It set up a skincare brand Dr. BERRY with an aim to boost its revenues. The ingredients include strawberry fruit and seed extracts that help improve skin condition and white strawberry juice with skin moisturizing properties, as well as human adipose-derived stem cell-conditioned media extract that activate cells. The farm cultivates three strawberry varieties — Akihime, Benihoppe and a white strawberry … Continue reading

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Farmers take pride in return of Tokyo University of Agriculture’s runners, cheering squad, and radish dance to Hakone Ekiden

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

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Is it really a toy or genuine?

TOKYO, Dec. 23 – A series of capsule toys featuring Japanese local milk brands is making a big hit in Japan. The gacha toys created under the supervision of the National Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Associations (ZEN-NOH) are as small as a little finger but look precisely like a 1-liter milk carton or a 200-ml milk bottle, which you see every day everywhere in Japan. Having a retro feel that attracts mostly young people and a lineup that allures collectors, they are helping to create milk fans. You turn a lever of the gacha vending machine to get one of the six miniature milk cartons and bin, like that famous … Continue reading

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