Ingredients in rice balls sold at convenience stores.

Pickled plums are the most orthodox and major ingredients used for rice balls. The Kanji description '紀州' on the package of a rice ball in this photograph means the pickled plums contained were produced in Kishu district. Kishu was the old name of Wakayama prefecture and Wakayama is famous for nice plum production. As the youngster’s tastes tend to be oriented for meat ingredients today, the rice balls containing pickled plums seem to be becoming less popular. Mixture with perilla leaves also is a popular ingredient for rice balls. Mixing with other vegetables may be an interesting trial for the development of new ingredients, because new kinds of vegetable ingredients are required for busy persons who have to take enough nutrients in vegetables even by a hurried meal of rice balls. The price of rice ball in the photo is 105 yen. The Hiragana expression 'ねり' in center below of the seal means that contained pickled plums were knead. You can also find not-knead type pickled plums from which the seed was not removed.

Sami beach

When I try to evaluate essential value of things, the first thing I do is to find what doesn’t exist nevertheless that is indispensable in the situation. In this case of Sami beach, I feel, viewpoint from tourism and new concept of seasonal restaurants don’t exist.  This beach can be a good component of nice tour course designed for domestic tourists from eastern part of Japan in summer season. A rough idea of the course is as follows.

Get out of Kodama super express at Shinkurashiki station. -> View old premises and historic districts in Kurashiki and Tamashima districts. -> See sunset seascape of Sami beach and have a dinner. Perhaps,  new type of seasonal restaurant or cafe may be required for the tourists visiting this bathing beach firstly opened in Japan. 

2009 tourist season has come.

2009 tourist season has come. If you have a plan on visiting Onomichi city and are interested in architectures of old temples, this book would be helpful, though written in only Japanese. The four temples in Onomichi city, Joudoji, Saigouji, Saigokuji and Tenneiji are analyzed from the view point of a shrine carpenter. The book title means nearly ‘Visiting 1000 years old temples with a shrine carpenter’ . (Pocketbook.571Yen)

1934.3.16

It has been 75 years since this area was appointed the Setonaikai National Park on March 16, 1934, as one of three oldest national parks in Japan. But after that, many important tidelands have been lost due to the industrialization during these 75 years. The way to Environment Conscious marine-oriented tourist resort has been almost closed during our parents’ and grandparents’ generations. Though the conditions are not so good, I want to believe that new segments in tourism become promising owing to rapid industrialization.  

The possibilities of Android applications.

In JR train stations many posters advertising tourist resorts are put on the wall. Most of Japanese people can perceive the message at a glance and pass by them without serious attention when not interested. But for foreigners who don’t have enough knowledge can’t get adequate information even if attracted by the photo on the poster. I think OCR bar code for foreign tourists should be marked on such posters that can be read by cell phones with Chrome terminal that enable to display the search results automatically. Typing any characters into keypad or pushing buttons may be troublesome in such situations. If the poster couldn't catch the moment, the scenery photo would be mostly forgotten.

Similar situation will appear also in car advertising and therefore applications in that segment may be promising. To catch design-sensitive car fans, real streets on the ground can be the most powerful showrooms of cars. If some foreign person happened to encounter a favorite type design unknown car running on the street, and its photo was taken with G-phone camera, the car name could be displayed by image processing program on the phone. Developing such application seems to be becoming more realistic since the appearance of Android.

Perhaps, application in the apparel industry seems to be interesting, if linked with sensitivity engineering.

(Above illustration is from the CD attached to the Book 'Selections from figured paper in Kyoto and Japanese patterns' published by Impress Japan.)

Beyond the limitation of sushi’s popularity

The more sushi become popular in the world, an anxiety for the shortage of the fishery resource seems to be more realistic. Even if the resource problems are solved, the environmental load by transportation of raw fishes into inland part of continental Nations couldn't be negligible. Consequently, the rapid expansion of demand for extra-popular fishes, shortage of their supplies and the formation of expensive image will finally lead to downward transition of sushi’s popularity. Both good quality and low price consist only in sea Nation like Japan or UK. Forecasting such new phase, I think the chefs and restaurant owners may have to reconsider their strategies. There may be many ways. My idea about it is that the key point exists in the combination of cheap ingredients. Even if popular ingredients become expensive, combinations of cheap ingredients can substitute and exceed them. The originality of the combination would be a watershed. My favorite combinations are, cheap shells, Nattomaki and Arajiru miso soup. I feel such combinations are more delicious than any other expensive single ingredients. Those combinations are almost overlapped with the realm of traditional Japanese dishes. Perhaps, there may be fusion segments around the border between sushi and traditional Japanese dishes. And those segments may be environmental-friendly. The targets of investigations are, for example, miso soup's ingredients, varieties of soy sauces, introductions of new shells and seaweeds. The combination with Oden as a healthy side dish may be an interesting sales style. For tourism in this area, combinations with fishing charter boat seem to be interesting. Some fishing charter boat already give 'Fish-and-Eat fresh raw fishes on the boat' services. But, the innovations of the facility for sushi cooking on small boat may be required for tourism of the Inland Sea.