TOKYO: Japanese food businesses including retailers and restaurant chains are competing to sell eel products ahead of the midsummer Day of the Ox on Wednesday, when demand is expected to spike.
Their sales lineups range from luxurious items for a festive mood to affordable ones for consumers weary of the protracted inflation.
“Let’s eat eel and overcome summer,” an industry official said.
The Daimaru Tokyo store, operated by Daimaru Matsuzakaya Department Stores Co., offers about 70 kinds of eel products, its widest variety ever.
While it sells luxurious items such as an eel bento box priced at 4,590 yen from Isesada, a long-established grilled eel restaurant, and a bento containing both eel and high-end Yonezawa beef for 5,400 yen, items priced at around 1,000 yen are also on sale.
“We want many people to enjoy the seasonal tradition despite the rising prices,” an official said.
At Ito-Yokado and York supermarket stores under Seven & i Holdings Co., shredded eel on rice using Chinese eels, available from July 1 for 429 yen per pack, are flying off the shelf.
They also supply large grilled eels from Kagoshima Prefecture, southwestern Japan, for 2,570 yen per fish, which is priced 200 yen lower than last year to attract price-sensitive customers.
Aeon Retail Co. has come up with a unique product. It offers grilled eel skewers for 861 yen per set of four skewers, targeting Generation Z, or people born in and after the late 1990s.
A spokesperson said that the company aimed to develop something that could win interest from the younger generation in order to help maintain fish food culture.
Family restaurant chain Gusto, operated by Skylark Holdings Co., sells grilled eel on rice in three grades from 1,390 yen to 1,990 yen. It is winning good responses from customers, officials say.
Tendon Tenya, a restaurant chain that serves rice bowls with “tempura” deep-fried fish and vegetables and is under Royal Holdings Co., set the selling period for its rice bowl with grilled eel tempura and grated yam, priced at 1,080 yen, from Monday to Aug. 7, twice as long as last year.
This year has another midsummer Day of the Ox on Aug. 5.
JIJI Press