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Amy Nip

The impact of the nuclear reactor meltdown in Fukushima triggered by the tsunami last March was felt far and wide.
Hong Kong's restaurant trade will never be quite the same.
Within days Japanese restaurants had emptied out as diners worried about eating irradiated food. Sales plunged by as much as 80 per cent, and 20 of the city's 700 closed. 
Eventually, though, patrons returned and business is starting to return to normal at the restaurants that survived, said Simon Wong Ka-wo,  president of the Hong Kong Federation of Restaurants and Related Trades. 
They've had to make changes, though, to reassure diners the food they are serving is safe. That's had a big impact on their suppliers. 
Takehisa Nagatani  of Daikichi Shouten, which supplies Omi beef from Shiga prefecture near Kyoto to Hong Kong's City'super  and Mandarin Oriental Hotel,  saw exports to Hong Kong drop by 40 per cent right after the quake. 
The beef trade was particularly hard hit because many farms used straw from Fukushima to feed their cattle, said Takehisa, who uses home-grown straw.  Sales are still down by about 20 per cent compared to last year, but he says the  Hong Kong people's confidence in Japanese beef is recovering sooner than other parts of the world.  
With a flurry of food promotions next month, he expects a full recovery to pre-disaster export levels.  
Until last March,  Japanese restaurants in Hong Kong imported  seafood from  northern  Honshu island - including Kyoto, the Tohoku region and  Fukushima  - but with much of the industry there destroyed or off limits,  restaurant and supermarket buyers are sourcing produce from elsewhere.
Daniel Chong, from the Japanese-style Yata Department Store  in Sha Tin, has seen the prices of tuna, salmon, oysters, scallops and crabs from Japan's northernmost main island, Hokkaido, rise remarkably.
To the north of Hokkaido, the Russian-controlled Southern Kuril Islands have for six decades been a source of territorial friction. Now they, too, are benefiting from the  shake-up in food exports to Hong Kong.
The Kurils  are a source of sweet shrimp and king crabs, which used to be processed in the quake-affected areas, according to one restaurateur.  
'Before the earthquake, the Russians sent the seafood to Fukushima  and Aomori  for processing,' Raymond Hui,   managing director of the Great Asia Japanese Restaurant,  said. 
'Now they have moved their base to South Korea, where they export the food to Hong Kong.
'They [Russians] are taking things into their own hands. In the past, about 85 per cent of the restaurant's food came from Japan. Now, it's about 60 per cent, and the rest comes from South Korea, Taiwan and Australia.' 
Southern Japan, including the island of Kyushu,  had also expanded its share of the market for Japanese food exports to Hong Kong, Wong said.
At the same time, new players are hoping to break into the Hong Kong market. 
Among them is exporter D's Plate,  which is promoting its upmarket Okinawa mangoes, at HK$300 each, in the city. The firm hopes people will develop a taste for the fruit.  
'Hong Kong people love Japanese products,' chief operating officer Yoshio Tada  said. 
Kunioka Noodles,  an instant-ramen maker from Sapporo, is equally optimistic. Hong Kong is the company's first step outside its home  base; the product is not even sold in Honshu. 
'The domestic economy has been affected by the quake. Exporting to China may help our recovery,' Kunioka representative Xie Miaozi said. 
One Japanese restaurateur, however, remains loyal to  disaster-hit Honshu and is keen to do what he can to help recovery efforts.
Fujio Sodeyama  was a tuna fisherman in Miyagi prefecture  before opening a restaurant in Hong Kong a decade ago. 
He wanted to import some seafood from the area so for the first time, his Causeway Bay eatery, Kosyu,  will have fish from Sendai - Miyagi's capital city - on the menu.




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