on Apr 17th, 2008
Flour!
At the outset of this local diet I thought that one of the harder staple food items to find might be flour. Some of the people who tried to do the 100 mile diet in Vancouver, Canada, found that one of the hardest things to find was wheat (flour) and they missed it a lot. I also assumed that a lot of the wheat in Japan would be imported from aboard (from places such as Canada).
While searching the web a couple of days ago I found the website for a company called Maeda Foods (link (Japanese), but only to a small website that sells the flour through Rakuten, a website that hosts poeople’s shops), that sells flour from Kanto (the area of Japan in which I live). Kanto entirely fits within the 200km radius that I set up so this was a good first sign.
I sent them a quick email asking them where their wheat was grown and where the factory is and I got a reply the next morning ( I was surprised at the speed alone). The wheat is grown in Gunma and Saitama Prefectures and the factory, also, is located in Saitama Prefecture (Satte City, about 50km from the Tokyo border). Additionally the prices were pretty reasonable in comparison to what one can buy in the grocery store. They sell direct by mail and the size of the packages ranges from 500g (which can make it through the mail slot and qualifies as letter-sized mail) to 25kg bag and costs about 200yen / kilogram.
I am also looking into break-machines and will likely buy one to make my bread at home.