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What is your favorite ice cream? Is it the one that you always pick up at the supermarket or convenience store? Is it the soft serve you find when taking a trip to somewhere new? Or is it the one you eat under the blue skies on a clear day at the beach? Regardless of the place or brand, there are times when just eating ice cream is enough to soothe you and bring happiness! For anyone visiting Nagano Prefecture, we highly recommend stopping by MDI (Mount Desert Island) Ice Cream. It may well change the ranking of your favorites. MDI ICE CREAM (MDI) was established in Maine, U.S.A. in 2005, and now has three stores in the U.S. and two in Japan. With the motto “making the ice cream we ourselves want to eat,” this brand creates unique ice cream flavors made from scratch with only real ingredients. The first shop in Japan opened in the fall of 2019 on Nawate-dori in Matsumoto City, Nagano, and since then it has been wooing customers every day with their unique artisanal ice cream. In April 2022, they opened their second shop and enlarged production facility in the Azumino area of Nagano,

The man who knows the most about food distribution in Japan emphasizes the importance of temperature control for the safe distribution of fresh, delicious fish at a low price. This time I interviewed Mr. Ryohei Nomoto, President of Haneda Ichiba Co., Ltd. who is the driving force behind a system that distributes fish caught in the countryside to the Tokyo metropolitan area with the same freshness as the source.

The Shibuya area of Tokyo, is a well known bustling area lined with all types of shops, restaurants and bars where the younger crowd walks the streets, but deep within this area is an area known as “Oku-Shibuya”. In this area, away from the hustle and bustle of the busy shopping district, there is a cheese shop that produces and sells freshly made mozzarella and other cheeses. It is called “& CHEESE STAND”. The impetus for this interview came from a tweet on Twitter by the company’s president, Mr. Shinji Fujikawa. We noticed that “Ondotori” were being used during the cheese production process to check and manage temperature. We immediately called them for an interview, and they agreed to talk with us, which led to this installment of Ondotori-ism. Actually they have 3 shops: the “SHIBUYA CHEESE STAND” and “& CHEESE STAND” in the Shibuya Ward and the “CHEESE STAND LAB.” in the Setagaya Ward. This time we visited the “& CHEESE STAND”, a small production space and shop in Tomigaya, Shibuya Ward, not far from Yoyogi Park, to talk with them. Date April 19, 2022 Place & CHEESE STAND Models in Use TR-71wb Purpose Temperature management during the cheese