The historic surge in rice prices in Japan has led retailers to seek alternatives, using less expensive ingredients like barley and noodles in bento meal boxes to curb prices and retain customers.
Some retailers are expanding the sale of lower-priced foreign rice.
In March, convenience store chain Lawson started selling the "Okazudon!" series of bento products, which contain less rice but more spaghetti and side dishes in order to reduce costs while securing volume.
by SkyInJapan
16 comments
A bold prediction: The continuous rise in rice prices will persist until the Japanese people can no longer tolerate it, leading to large-scale riots.
Then a government official will come forward to bow and apologize, after which rice prices will stop rising and gradually decline.
Public anger will subside, life will return to normal, and rice prices will eventually settle at 10%~15% higher than the original price.
I hope I’m wrong.
There used to be a sneaky bit of spaghetti in most bentos years ago. Then it kind of disappeared as, I assume, a result of cost cutting. Now the humble spaghetti noodle is once again called on to bulk up our bentos.
The price is going up! Better hoard it now! Buy as much as you can store! (Price goes up from excess hoarding.) It went up! I knew it! Better buy more! It’s going to go up even more from here! (Price goes up more.)
This has been the last year in a nutshell.
Yes there are slight supply side issues but if demand stayed constant, we are talking about maybe a 10% increase in price. I’ve done too much research on this topic. This is driven by future price expectations of households.
Bentos haven’t had hamburgers for a very long time. 🙁
One of these days they are going to replace the rice with just a slice of bread.
And yet JA still buys the rice at an absolutely piss poor rate from the farmers. Retailers are part of the problem, only they have a leverage against JA.
… say… America, all of a sudden, found a lot of soy beans. You guys want some? /s
In the mid 90s, Lawson used to have a bento of tonkatsu and sauce over spaghetti noodles. Yummy!!!!
Maybe Japan should lower the astronomical tariffs on foreign rice? They can subsidize Japanese rice farmers as a way to placate them.
Otherwise, citizen just have to be fine with high rice prices…
I like the inclusion of barley though if it’s like the mugi rice that comes with gyutan – lots more fibre
Bento sucks. Low quality fatty greasy carb heavy garbage. No thanks.
Better blame foreigners consuming all their rice! /s
JA are currently hoarding the rice from the farmers and the rice they purchased from the Gov auction (They secured 90% of the Auctioned Rice)
These pricks are currently holding the country to Ransom, claiming they’re doing this to “Help” the farmers, but they’re not passing the money down to them…
Japan NEEDS to hold these BASTARDS to account, They deliberately manufactured this inflation situation.
Japan NEEDS to ditch the tariff’s on Australian Rice (American Rice can stay tariffed to high hell for the current shitshow going on) And keep it at a low price – You can buy Australian Rice for under $3.00AUD per KG (Medium Grain) around Y270 Per KG with the current exchange rate. Add on Y150 per KG for distribution and the country can rest easier…
Have a version that is Mixed with Japanese rice (50-50 mix) so people don’t complain about the lack of starch. And start selling Plain, Mix and Japanese…
I can only imagine how much the price of Japanese rice will rise (and has probably already risen) worldwide.
Isn’t alot of this due to the fact that Japan basically won’t import rice from other countries? From what I understand domestic rice growing is considered a national security issue and they won’t bring in outside rice for fears it would collapse domestic growers prices.
Gov. should open an investigation to JAs practices regarding rice and subpoena all the top management communications about it.
I bet there would a some kind of smoking gun there to screw the consumer.