Japan's never been the easiest place to live organically. Whilst the big supermarkets in the UK have had pretty good organic ranges on the shelves for well over 5 years, in Japan you're still hard-pushed to find any complete organic ranges in the mainstream stores.
That's not to say there is no organic industry here - there is, and it's huge - but it's still yet to become affordable and hit the mainstream as it did back home a few years back.
In our local neighbourhood we have a couple of organic shops. They're pretty small, but nonetheless have a decent range of (expensive) fruit, veg and daily consumables.
We also have a farmer come and park up outside our house every Sunday morning. He drives in from Chiba to sell his produce direct. I like that a lot, as not only is it affordable, but also we know we're supporting the grower - and there's no packaging to throw away.
Organic box schemes are starting to take off too, with a whole bunch of companies offering order-online home delivery services.
One problem with 'organic' food in Japan is that a lot of people don't seem to know what 'organic' means, - resulting in food that is incorrectly sold as organic when in fact it actually just has less chemicals than usual (Japan uses more chemicals per square acre of agricultural land than any other country).
Thankfully, in 2000 Japan did introduce an organic food certification system, JAS, and it is becoming more common to see the logo on the shelves.
I took the photo above in a local convenience store. I'm not sure why they chose to call this organic coffee 'E-Coffee' - maybe it contains organic ecstasy to give ravers an extra boost...
Do you eat organic? Is it easy to get organic foods where you live?
Joseph
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