insights from frontier Japan

This year’s first auction of ‘Nanamitsuki’ apples, the original brand of the town of Nanae in southern Hokkaido, took place at the Hakodate Regional Wholesale Fruit and Vegetable Market on November 12. One box of seven apples with a net weight of 3 kg was auction-off for 70,000 yen, the same record-high price as the past 5 years.

While grapes for making wine are starting to ripen in southern Hokkaido in September, efforts to transform the area into a wine production region are advancing.

A research group consisting of Hokkaido University Graduate School of Fisheries Sciences and other institutes artificially bred approx. ten thousand kaluga sturgeons. The kaluga sturgeon is a very rare fish that yields premier grade caviar.

At the Junsainuma Swamp in Onuma Park located in southern Hokkaido's Nanae Town, a summer vegetable called ‘water shield’ with a pleasantly viscous texture is in its peak harvest season.