Warming seas pushed a pufferfish north across the Tsugaru Strait, and the hybrids do not fit Japan's 1983 table of edible species and parts. How the rulebook caught up, and why the Mediterranean has the same gap.
SUSHI BUS puts a working conveyor-belt sushi lane on the upper deck of an open-top double-decker and sends it around Tokyo from October 2026. Seventy minutes, all you can eat, 20 seats.
Kewpie sets up an Indian sales company in September 2026. In the US, egg yolk is what legally makes mayonnaise mayonnaise. In India, egg is what earns the non-vegetarian mark. Same ingredient, opposite verdicts.
The crab stick in your salad or sushi roll traces back to a small town on Japan's Noto Peninsula, where it was invented as one of the country's great postwar food breakthroughs. The global surimi market is worth several billion dollars, roughly half of it crab sticks. Riding a wave of fish-eating and high-protein diets, kanikama is spreading fast, so why is Japan's surimi know-how so hard to imitate, and how is it sold abroad?
Nissin launched the first-ever cold-water-only Cup Noodle on July 20. Its patented Cold Rehydrate technology turns fridge-chilled water into chewy noodles in 5 minutes. Here's how Japan, birthplace of instant ramen, keeps reinventing it.
The 1910 Asakusa shop credited with inventing soy-sauce ramen and spreading the '-ken' naming culture is back. As ramen overtakes sushi with global tourists, the founder's great-great-grandson revives a legend.
Japan saw a record 36 ramen shop bankruptcies in the first half of 2026. While the world pays $18 a bowl, shops in ramen's homeland collapse against a cultural price ceiling of 1,000 yen (about $6). Here is the structural squeeze behind the paradox.
Foreign visitors spent ¥2.07 trillion (~$12.9B) on food in Japan in 2025, 21.9% of all inbound spending. What 42 million tourists eat, the dietary-diversity gap, and how to plan a gourmet trip.
Anglers curse it, and it devours kelp forests. Now a patent-pending method to kill the rabbitfish's notorious stench has Japan talking. A look at turning a nuisance fish into food, and how the world is doing the same.
Pepperoni pizza and parmesan are loaded with umami. Everyone tastes it, yet a Japanese chemist named it in 1908. The story of Kikunae Ikeda, the century the West shrugged, and the receptor that finally proved him right.
Kobe Beef and Miyazaki are on menus worldwide, yet Mishima and Iga beef never leave Japan. As wagyu exports hit record highs, here is why some brands cross the ocean and others stay home, from breeds and slaughterhouses to the stalled China resumption.