Japan farm, food exports up 10.9% to record high in 1st half of 2026
Ideas
It seems Japan, like South Korea, is seeing a surge not only in foreign visitors but also many things related to each country and Japanese food and even Korean food products are becoming very popular around the world now.
Even for example, the price of Itoen Japanese bottle tea, the famous and popular green tea brand in Japan is now very more expensive on Amazon and its not just because shipping and tariff costs but because of the huge demand for anything related to Japanese green tea products now.
Its now known that Japanese food, for the most part, is very healthy and there seems to be trend to look for healthy food now and green tea and matcha are very healthy products as global consumers are looking to find the in supermarkets and of course online places like Amazon.
To be fair, not all Japanese food products are healthy as Japan has its share of fast food and junk food but for the most part Japanese food products are light years ahead of food in the west.
While there is still a 15 percent US tariff on Japanese food products it doesn't seem to have slowed down, too much, the demand in the US or healthy Japanese food and the tariff might not be that big of hindrance or is not noticed that much as food for, overall, in the US keeps increasing so a 15 tariff probably, again, is not that big a deal for most people looking for healthy Japanese food products.
What's interesting is, just before the pandemic, there was in South Korea a boycott of Japanese products as, as usual, sometimes there are these tit or tat minor diplomatic situations between the two countries but ever since the pandemic as ended there has been a surge in South Korean tourists going to Japan and a result the so called boycott, as usual, as calmed down, as now Japanese and South Koreans are going back and forth respectively in large numbers to each others country.
Again, the increase in price doesn't seem to be a major challenge for those looking for Japanese food products, as for whatever reason, many of the products are labeled or characterized as exotic products, which in reality they are not exotic products but just ordinary Japanese products but whomever likes to make things seems rare or they use the word exotic to increase the price of what are normal regular products in Japan or even in other countries too.
Have a nice day!
Article source: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20260804/p2g/00m/0bu/030000c
