Karakui

We’ve seen coffee (albeit already ground and not whole beans) from Okinawa for sale in Japan, but did you know that there’s an official project under way to make large scale coffee production from Okinawa a reality?

What is the Okinawa Coffee Project?

The “Okinawa Coffee Project” started in Nago City, Okinawa Prefecture in April 2019, is a collaboration between Nestle and “Okinawa SV (Okinawa Esfa)” led by Naoyasu Takahara, a former Japanese national football team, in cooperation with Nago City and the University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa. We are aiming to cultivate the first large-scale domestic coffee beans.
By utilizing abandoned cultivated land in Okinawa Prefecture, we are challenging to make coffee beans and coffee products new specialty products by expanding the production of coffee beans from Okinawa Prefecture, which have been limited in limited quantities so far.

We’re big fans of coffee (we love tea, too!) so this news would’ve been enough, but we’re Karakui so what’s the pop culture aspect of this? Well, lo and behold, HY created “Ashitane” — a new song and music video for the project. By the way, the music features students from Chatan’s RN Entertainment so you may be seeing the next Amuro Namie in their ranks.