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Kona coffee industry offers Japanese-language tours

Hawaii's Kona coffee industry is looking to attract more Japanese consumers by offering special tours.

Mountain Thunder Coffee Plantation is one of the farms taking the lead by launching a Japanese-language Web site, hiring a Japanese-speaking concierge and offering tours targeted at Japanese visitors, co-owner Trent Bateman said.

"They like to have expanded knowledge of how we get the quality and how we actually do the labor," he said.

"It just so happens that Japanese people pioneered this industry. Now they might have faded a little bit and the newcomers outnumber them, but the allure of Hawaii and of Kona coffee has not gone away," Bateman said.

The Hawaii County Research and Development Department helped produce a Japanese edition of the self-guided Kona Coffee Country Driving Tour brochure.

The map highlights nearly 60 farms that offer tours, tastings and retail. The brochure also provides background information on the 180-year Kona coffee heritage, the Kona Coffee Cultural Festival in November, coffee roasting and processing, and the list of Kona coffee farms that have won the festival's cupping competition over the last 20 years.

Shunta Baba, a master purchaser for Japan's UCC Ueshima Coffee Co Ltd, is a veteran of the Kona Coffee Cultural Festival that is wrapping up this weekend, having served for several years as an expert judge at the cupping competition.

"The younger generation is drinking more coffee," he said. "Japan does think about Kona coffee as a premium coffee."

"Most people in Japan don't know about how to process coffee so visitors here are very interested to see that," Baba said. "For them, it is a first time to be able see this. When you are selling coffee in Japan, you are also selling how coffee is made."

UCC Ueshima also sponsors the Miss Kona Coffee Scholarship Pageant and organizes an extended promotional tour of Japan during the queen's reign.

The relationship works both ways, with UCC Ueshima hosting a group of Japanese contest winners at this year's 37th annual Kona Coffee Cultural Festival.

"We have always been very close with our ties to Japan and it appears it is growing every year," said Norman Sakata, longtime festival president and cochairman.
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