Retailers in Japan are offering a wide range of eel products to attract consumers ahead of Sunday\u2019s Day of the Ox, a traditional day for eating nutritious grilled eels to fight the summer heat.<\/p>\n
Two major supermarket chains cut prices for their mainstay grilled eel items after a bountiful fry catch last year.<\/p>\n
Aeon Retail sells large kabayaki grilled eels weighing 156 grams at \u00a52,180 ($13), down \u00a5500 from a year earlier. Starting Friday, the company will offer a choice of larger eels weighing 300 grams.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe price cut will give a good opportunity for many people to enjoy eels,\u201d an Aeon official said.<\/p>\n
Ito-Yokado will begin on Saturday sales of unaj\u016b rice dishes topped with grilled eels at \u00a51,980, down \u00a5400 from the previous year.<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite higher costs for all but eels, we could realize the 400-yen price cut by limiting the scope of eligible products,\u201d an Ito-Yokado official said.<\/p>\n
Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings\u2019 flagship Nihonbashi Mitsukoshi department store in Tokyo on Wednesday began sales of fully cultivated eels for the first time in the world. The kabayaki eel product, offered in a limited number of 73, has a relatively high price tag of \u00a55,500 for a piece weighing 165 grams.<\/p>\n
A man in his 50s who lined up from 7 a.m. said, \u201cI wanted to eat fully farmed eels\u201d as they could help preserve fishery resources. \u201cI hope such eels will be distributed routinely,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The eels on sale at the store, which were farm-raised by people from egg to harvest without relying on natural eggs and fry, were supplied from Yamada Suisan, based in Saiki, Oita Prefecture. The company began test sales of such eels in May for the first time in the world.<\/p>\n
A number of customers found the eels delicious during the test sales, Yamada Suisan director Naotake Kato said. \u201cWe hope to confirm whether the products will attract department store customers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Retailers in Japan are offering a wide range of eel products to attract consumers ahead of Sunday\u2019s Day…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4319,40686,6939,8,9175],"class_list":["post-62697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-department-stores","tag-eels","tag-fishing","tag-japan","tag-supermarkets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}