Koyama 『news every』summary and screencaps February 23
A recap of『news every』from the past week - Wednesday February 23.
Included are screencaps and a summary of Koyama's Kininaru segment and the other segments that he is involved in, both commenting and presenting. Much of this week's program was dedicated to reports of the devastating earthquake in Christchurch and a number of missing Japanese students studying in one of the major collapsed buildings.
This week for Kininaru (as hinted in his jweb) Koyama visited the 'Naked Man Festival' in Okayama Prefecture With many thanks once again to daelite.
Summary of Christchurch news
Koyama gave a deep bow as they reviewed the state of the situation in Christchurch New Zealand.
Interesting Vegetables
Koyama helped introduce a video about a special farmers market. The vegetables sold are fresh and there a lots of interesting varieties! Tomatoes shaped like hearts, blue and yellow carrots, purple cauliflower and cucumbers shaped like stars and hearts! They also sell sushi. Another plus to the shop is that there are workers walking around that will give you advice on how to prepare a meal with the food too. You can get fresh veggies straight from the farm and buy with confidence. The sushi is made by a small factory run by a friendly middle aged lady. She does her best to use local products whenever possible for their sushi- local rice, eggs, cucumber, etc.
Coffee News
Starbucks now has a coffee that costs 650 yen a cup, called "high quality" coffee. Their big rival in Japan, Doutor also has a new product- Kenya baraka coffe which sells at 1070 yen for a 200 gram pack. For a small cup in store, it only costs 270 McDonald's sells coffee for just 120 yen, and their coffee sales are going up. But why is Starbuck's new expensive "high quality" coffee still selling well? news every checked out Starbucks in America, where this new "high quality" coffee is popular too. They visited Seattle, where Starbucks began. They visit the headquarters there, looking at where the beans are rotated, where the drinks are flavor and smell checked, etc. Interview the CEO of Starbucks, he comments that they know the Japanese customer values quality above all else. So even if the coffee is expensive, if it's worth it they'll buy.
At the end of the segment, Koyama comments that he's interviewed Starbucks employees before. They believe they are selling not just coffee, but an atmosphere good for drinking coffee.
Ki ni Naru
Koyama visited the "Naked Man Festival" at Saidaiji in Okayama Prefecture. Here, tons of men (9000) strip down to a loincloth and fight for a chance to grab shingi, small sticks of wood said to bring good luck. Koyama visited the temple in the day before the festival, to see where the shingi would be thrown from.
Koyama then visited the Saito family, the father has participated in the festival for over 30 years. Koyama asks Saito what the festival is, and Saito explains it's life itself. His wife is making inari sushi for him to eat before the festival.
Saito is part of a team-- people can participate in the festival alone or in teams. 3 hours before the shingi will be thrown, their team changes into the fundoshi (loin cloth type garments) and head to the temple.
The temple is lined with police and guards to try and keep things under control later. But the place is already getting exciting as more and more participants show up. There were even foreigners. The guys gather around where the shingi will be thrown out, packed in as tight as they can be. At times they lose balance and push others down.
As this all happened, Koyama was safely on the otherside of a fence- watching from afar, haha.
At 10PM the lights flash out and the box of shingi is thrown out. The chance of getting on is 1 in 4500, there's only 2! But one of Saito's team mates got one!
Koyama gets a chance to hold the shingi and has a huge smile on his face. Everyone celebrates for the young team member who managed to get the shingi.