Category Archives: Photos

【News】 Let giant potato skeletons link the world (Oct. 11, 2015)

Kazuhiro Eguchi – Big potato artwork on display (Memuro-cho, Hokkaido) – A unique display of big wooden potato skeletons is now open to the public in Memuro-cho, Hokkaido. The artwork is built in an old red brick warehouse, which is owned by JA Memuro, an agricultural co-op in Memuro, by a 78-year-old contemporary artist, Osamu Asano, and local farmers. It took four years for him and his supporters to complete the project whose goal is “making more people to think about   food and peace through art works.” The biggest potato inside the red brick building is six meters high and ten meters wide. Scrap woods gathered from old school buildings … Continue reading

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【News】 Students polishing oaring skills in middle of beautiful rice fields (Sept. 27, 2015)

Kotaro Yamada Here in the agricultural water channel in the Kurume-shi, Fukuoka Prefecture, you’ll see young paddlers on canoes practicing almost every day. They are students of Fukuoka Prefectural Mizuma High School and members of the Canoe Club of the school. The channel of 20 meters wide and 1 kilometer long is calm and very quiet. It’s almost waveless and windless thanks to the bank. “The channel provides perfect conditions for practicing canoe and our students have an advantage in being able to practice almost every day even in the rough weather,” Kazuhiko Tomimatsu, a 43-year-old teacher of the high school and an advisor to the club, explained. Through repeated … Continue reading

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【News】 Rice gel with flexible texture possessing potential for wide application (Sept. 13, 2015)

Kazuhiro Eguchi New rice-derived foodstuff is drawing attentions as a new ingredient with a potential for a wide variety of applications. The new ingredient is made from rice of high amylose content and called “rice gel” from how it has a jelly-like consistency. You cook the rice and chop it up using a special high-speed mixer. The thickness of the texture is controllable from soft jelly to gumlike by changing the amount of water to cook rice and the mixing speed. The rice gel was developed by National Food Research Institute (NFRI), which is one of the research institutions within the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO), in cooperation … Continue reading

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【News】 Never ever push me from the back! (Sept. 6, 2015)

Kotaro Yamada Narita Dream Dairy Farm, a guest ranch in Narita-shi, Chiba Prefecture, has a bridge exclusively designed for goats. It’s a popular attraction for visitors to see goats walking in the air. Wooden panels are fixed on logs to make the goatwalk of about 50 meters long, 18 centimeters wide and 2.5 meters high. It was built in July 2011 to allow goats, which love heights, can play on it. Goats climb up and walk on the narrow bridge quite lightly and easily. Sometimes they fall but never get hurt as they are also good at landing on their feet. The farm has approximately 30 goats and visitors can … Continue reading

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【News】 Local monsters rampage to save Japan (Sept. 2, 2015)

Kazuhiro Eguchi “Local monsters” designed based on local specialties including agricultural products are drawing attentions as new tools for regional promotion. They are a little different from cute local mascot characters (yuru-chara) in how they leave strong impression. The whole project is produced by Dai-Ichi Tsushinsha Inc., an advertising company headquartered in Tokyo, and Hiroshi Sagae, a master art director of special effects films particularly known for his work on the monster film “Gamera.” So far, they already created two dimensional images of 49 monsters and three dimensional models for 23 monsters among them, each inhabits in 46 different prefectures. Several monsters use agricultural products as motif. For example, Twoon … Continue reading

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