Category Archives: Photos

TOKYO, Sep. 26 – A Tokyo-based leather goods manufacturer and seller has released a line of items made of leather looking exactly like the skin of Shizuoka crown melon. The company, Earl’s Favorite, has succeeded in delicately recreating the beautiful webbing seen on the surface of the king of fruits in Japan by embossing the pattern on domestically-tanned cow leather. Currently, it sells wallets, smartphone cases and several other items made of the melon-skin leather with excellent texture. Even the color inside its products is chosen very carefully – juicy pale yellow-green, which is the color of the flesh of Shizuoka crown melons. To recreate the perfect texture and the … Continue reading →

TOYOAKE, Sept. 5 ― Edible flowers are making their way, not on top of menu items, but by blending with sea salt, into a variety of food and beverage. Hamataco Co. Ltd., an Aichi prefecture-based restaurant that makes takoyaki, or an octopus ball, has blended sea salt with locally made edible flowers. “In this way, it adds fresh floral flavors and aroma to salt,” said Masahito Hamada, Hamataco’s president in Toyoake city, which is well-known for the floral market. “I hope people will become interested in floral flavors in foods,” Hamada added.

TOKYO, Aug. 29 ― A new exhibit in Tokyo allows visitors to experience what it feels like being umeboshi, a Japanese salt plum, in a bento box. The bento, developed by Perfektron, is one of showcases in the “Design Ah! Exhibition.” The exhibit runs at Miraikan museum, or the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, in Tokyo’s Odaiba from July 19 to Oct. 18. Bento is a Japanese box that contains all the pieces of a traditional lunch in one small container. And a hinomaru bento resembles the national flag of Japan: plain white rice with a red salt plum in the middle. The exhibit of the hinomaru bento … Continue reading →

OBU, Aug. 26 ― A 73-year-old Japanese farmer has grown long gourds and says one day he will grow to a world’s record size. Masuo Hanai works as a farmer in Obu city, Aichi prefecture. He grew the 350 cm gourd in his greenhouse in 2015. Gourds are in the same family as pumpkins and squash. When pumpkins mature, they just rot and collapse, whereas when gourds mature, they turn hard like wood and dry out. They are around forever and can be used for soup bowls or artwork crafts. The current world record for the longest gourd, which was grown in Canada, is 379 cm, according to the Japanese … Continue reading →

HOKKAIDO, Sept. 8 – An earthquake which rocked Hokkaido, logging the maximum 7 on Japan’s seismic intensity scale in the town of Atsuma, triggered massive landslides that engulfed houses, roads and farming facilities. Farmers and agricultural cooperative officials, while being shocked by the damages, are trying to clean up the places to resume operation. A 71-year-old rice farmer, who cultivates Nanatsuboshi and Yumepirika brand rice on a 9-hectare field, had his storehouse destroyed and pushed into the street by a mudslide. Everything in the storehouse, including a mini vehicle he bought last year, a large rice-planting machine and a sowing machine, toppled over. “I couldn’t believe my eyes when I … Continue reading →