Review of "Oishii Japan 2015" in Singapore

Oishii Japan is ASEAN's largest dedicated showcase on Japanese food and beverage which was recently held at the Suntec Convention Centre the past weekend. The first two days were opened to trade partners thus the public could only attend the event on the 24th. Even so, the opening hours were relatively short especially since I only managed to reach the venue two hours before the closing time and did not have enough time to visit all the booths. In addition, the fact that some of the booths had already been closed by the time of my visit meant that I wasn't getting access to all the content that was supposed to be showcased so I thought that it was a pity. Last but not least, as some of the booths had already sold all their merchandise, there were some items which I wanted to buy but couldn't. It might be good if there was a way to purchase the items directly from the manufacturers and get them delivered to Singapore especially if they had not found any distributors to sell the products locally. For example, there was this white wine from Yamanashi which I really liked after sampling it at the booth but was disappointed to find that there was no more stock and it was not available in Singapore yet.

The organisation of the booths at this event was in a somewhat inconsistent manner where some prefectures had a cluster of booths taken up by various companies based in that prefecture e.g. Aichi, Gunma, Chiba and Ibaraki. I suppose this was probably because they had more companies within a single prefecture to take up the cluster of booths compared to other prefectures which may have one or two companies taking part in this event. Those which were not put into the prefectural clusters either had the location of their home bases plus their company's names or just the companies' names reflected so it was tough to identify which items came from which area unless you talked to the staff manning the booths or read the brochures given out. In that sense, it might be good to see a classification of the booths according to geographical locations in future editions of this event.

As for the things I managed to buy from this event, first up were the tea products from Isodaen in Aichi. They were selling their products at buy two get one free for SGD 8 which I thought was a steal after sampling the tea. I got two packets of the mint tea bags and one for the green tea powder which I'll probably be using for my desserts.

At Daiei Foods' (Kanagawa) booth, most except for two of these items were sold out. The crab kamaboko was given out as samples and I really liked how fresh and flavourful it tasted. I was even more intrigued when the staff said that the kamaboko could be eaten straight after defrosting since it was already cooked before being frozen or to be used in salads. Nonetheless, when I ate the kamaboko today, I still cooked it since the idea of eating this raw was rather new to me. As for the other item, it was shellfish steamed in Japanese wine which could be eaten after defrosting. The rich flavour of the wine was nicely infused into the shellfish but may be a bit overpowering for people who doesn't like the smell and taste of alcohol. Although the staff said that the items can be bought at Meidi-ya, I'll have to check it out before this can be confirmed.

There was also a J Food Court where people could buy onigiri from SAMURICE, Singapore's first onigiri outlet or the Niku Soba from Keisuke Ramen. I even saw Takeda Keisuke-san, the founder of Keisuke Ramen at the booth. Unfortunately, both stalls were sold out by the time I reached so it was a pity that I couldn't taste the food there.

In conclusion, I thought that it was a good effort to boost awareness of Japanese food and beverages. However, it would have been better if the following improvements could be taken into consideration:
- Planning of the booth layouts to put companies from the same prefecture together or improved labeling to help visitors see the companies' origin easily from the signage
- Extended opening hours or increase in the number of public access days so that more visitors can attend the event
- Ensure that there is enough stock for individual visitors to purchase because it's rather disappointing to be greeted with "sold out" signs wherever you go

Till next year's event then!