Beaujolais Nouveau Arrives in Japan a Month Early

A long-established noodle shop in Nagoya has become known for extraordinarily large servings, including its signature "Pitcher Koro," a 1.5-kilogram dish combining kishimen, soba and udon in a giant pitcher.

The Hida Taste Festival, a long-running event that began in 1986, is held twice a year in spring and autumn and has become a popular attraction in Takayama. This autumn's festival features 22 vendors offering a wide variety of regional dishes, including grilled Hida beef skewers, mitarashi dango rice dumplings coated in a savory soy-based sauce, and salt-grilled ayu sweetfish.

A massive land-based Atlantic salmon farming facility is taking shape in a mountainous industrial district of Tsu City, Mie Prefecture, where foreign-owned Pure Salmon Japan has begun raising approximately one million young fish as part of an 80 billion yen project that is expected to become one of the world's largest operations of its kind, with plans to ship 10,000 tons of salmon annually from February 2028.

Prices of leafy vegetables are rising sharply across Japan as prolonged rainfall and reduced sunlight in September damage crops and disrupt harvesting, with farmers warning that shortages could continue into winter and push prices even higher during the peak season for hot pot dishes.

Prolonged rainfall in Tokyo lasting more than 20 days, combined with heavy rain from Typhoon No. 25 during the Silver Week holidays, has disrupted vegetable supplies and driven up prices, with some retailers facing the possibility of suspending sales of popular seasonal products such as roasted sweet potatoes.

Nara Prefecture is home to a remarkable variety of traditional dishes, including an ancient cheese-like food dating back some 1,300 years, a wild mountain vegetable enjoyed for generations and a homemade crepe once served on special occasions, offering a glimpse into the region's long culinary history.

Families and visitors are flocking to a farm in Minoh, Osaka Prefecture, to enjoy autumn chestnut picking, with this year's harvest producing smaller but particularly sweet chestnuts due to a lack of rainfall.

For more than six decades, Sanyuken Fukasawa Branch in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward has served generations of customers with familiar Chinese dishes, as its 72-year-old second-generation owner and his wife continue to run the 14-seat neighborhood restaurant largely by themselves.