Chris Loew

For the first time in its history, Food and Life Companies – which operates Sushiro, the top conveyor-belt sushi chain in Japan – is planning to open more restaurants overseas than in its home country.

Food and Life Companies plans to open 50 to 60 Sushiro shops overseas during the fiscal year ending in September 2023, while opening 18 to 22 in Japan over the same period. Sushiro’s overseas expansion has seen steady progress,

Thousands of Japanese food processors, including Shizuoka-based tuna canner Hagoromo Foods Co., plan to raise prices in 2023.  

In response to soaring prices of bonito and tuna, Hagoromo Foods already raised the prices of its products containing bonito as a main ingredient in July 2022, and its  products with tuna as a main ingredient in September 2022. 

Since then, however, the yen has depreciated significantly, and prices

Japanese spicy cod roe maker Yamaya Communications recently announced that it will be onshoring some cod-roe processing work previously done in Vietnam. 

In an interview with the Japanese public television channel NHK, the Fukuoka-based company’s president, Masahide Yamamoto, said that a major reason for returning the work to Japan was costs, as wages have risen in Vietnam, with the weaker Japanese yen compounding the company's

Japan, a major producer and exporter of mackerel, is also a major importer and it represents Norway’s most important international market for the species.

Despite catching hundreds of thousands of tons of mackerel, demand from Japanese consumers results in a high volume of imports of the species – with the vast majority of imports coming from Norway. This is because the Atlantic mackerel (Scomber scombrus) imported from Norway is

The top bluefin tuna sold during the first auction of the year at Tokyo’s Central Wholesale Market in Toyosu reached JPY 36,040,000 (USD 274,120, EUR 256,785), carrying on a tradition started at the market’s former location in Tsukiji and signaling some recovery from the pandemic.

The high price has nothing to do with the actual value of tuna, nor with its relative scarcity. As in years past, it’s a PR stunt and a reasonably

Japan and Russia have agreed to reduce the total allowable catch in each other’s fishing areas by 33 percent after the 39th meeting of the Japan-Russia Fisheries Committee. 

Japan and Russia have a longstanding agreement to allow reciprocal fishing access to areas of each other’s exclusive economic zones (EEZs). The Japan-Russia Fisheries Committee was established based on the Soviet-Japanese Agreement on Offshore Fisheries,

From 2 to 15 December, 2022, Kura Sushi featured farmed “AI Sumagatsuo” at it restaurants in Japan for the first time.

The “AI Sumagatsuo” – also known as eastern little tuna or mackerel tuna in English – is the third fish species being farmed at the sushi chain’s Kura Osakana Farm, joining its farming of red sea bream and yellowtail. Kura Sushi said its first batch of farmed mackerel tuna totaled 6