TOKYO - Japan's tuna market, the world's largest, is taking an outsized hit from the coronavirus pandemic, pressuring restaurants and wholesalers at Tokyo's sprawling Toyosu fish market to adapt to survive.
"Our sales are down by 60 per cent compared to last August," said 47-year-old Yasuyuki Shimahara, owner of an"izakaya" dining bar specialising in tuna dishes in Tokyo's Kanda business area. While some customers buy the boxes as gifts for elderly family members, others are put off by the lengthy process of defrosting tuna, which involves leaving the fish in the fridge for several hours.
That meant he was losing out on big orders, since customers tended to buy 30kg to 40kg of tuna at a time for events such as wedding banquets and funerals, while sushi restaurants and izakayas generally placed smaller orders of around 10kg and 6kg respectively. But he said there had been a slight pickup in overseas orders recently, with those from Russia in particular returning to pre-pandemic levels.
But the pandemic has hit the industry hard and Japan's tuna imports fell 18 per cent in the first six months of 2020 from a year earlier, finance ministry data showed. With people still wary of going out, the outlook is unlikely to change soon.
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