Category Archives: Food & Agriculture

TOKYO, Dec. 16 — A variety of sweets made from Japan-made rice flour are coming to the market for the Christmas season. Sponge cake and Stollen made from rice flour offer a fluffy texture and are proving popular, particularly among people with wheat allergy. Many producers of rice flour desserts are seeing a large increase in the number of pre-orders compared with last year, indicating the possibility of rice flour sweets becoming a standard in winter. Tsuno Co., a rice oil manufacturer, sells Stollen made from rice flour as a winter only product at 1,728 yen. The firm uses rice flour made from the Hinohikari brand rice. While Stollen usually … Continue reading →

FUKUOKA, TOKYO, Dec. 9 – Yay! We have wagyu Christmas cakeｓ this year! Prices of ingredients of regular Christmas cakes, such as strawberries and eggs, continue to rise, and so does Christmas cakes. So, many businesses are actively proposing to brighten up the dinner table with products featuring wagyu beef served in a cake-like style. Meat stores and yakiniku restaurants that regularly have business with wagyu beef producing areas are taking this strategy to boost demand for wagyu at the end of the year. Meat Shop n Fukuoka City, Fukuoka Prefecture, regularly sells Kuroge wagyu beef produced in the Kyushu, the southernmost island of Japan. Today, it sells more than … Continue reading →

SAITAMA, Dec. 8 — Chichibu Yomatsuri, an annual night festival with a history going back more than 300 years, was held in Chichibu, Saitama Prefecture. The festival, which honors silkworm farming that had thrived in the district, is regarded as one of the three major float festivals in Japan. The other two are Kyoto Gion Festival in Kyoto Prefecture and Hida Takayama Festival in Gifu Prefecture. The Chichibu festival fascinates visitors with its spectacular, ornate floats and fireworks lighting up the winter sky. At 6 p.m. on Dec. 3, the day when the main festival was held, people pulling the floats shouted “Horyai!” along with the rhythmical sounds of Japanese … Continue reading →

MIYAGI, IWATE, Nov. 21 – “Half-farmer, half-fisher” in the Tohoku northeastern region of Japan are being tossed about by escalating China-Japan political tensions. On the Pacific Coast in the Tohoku region of Japan, some people earn income from both farming and fishing, and they are struck again by the return of China’s ban on marine product imports from Japan. In August 2023, China suspended all Japanese seafood imports after Japan decided to release treated water from the No. 1 Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant into the ocean. However, the ban was lifted partially this year. Therefore, the latest suspension was a big blow. Hayashi, a fruit farmer and sea cucumber fisher … Continue reading →

HIROSHIMA, Nov. 30 — Workers at JA Hiroshimashi, an agricultural cooperative based in the city of Hiroshima, are busy pickling Hiroshima-na mustard greens, a traditional local specialty popular as year-end gifts. Around 4 tons of Hiroshima-na greens are placed in a pickling tank which is 1.8 meters wide and long and 3 m deep. After salt is sprinkled on them, they are pressed down with nine 250-kilogram weights. Up to roughly 15 tons of the vegetable are pickled in a day. They are pickled for a whole day, rinsed with water and then pickled again for one more day. Chili peppers and kelp are added at the end to create … Continue reading →