Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

Jewish Business News

World News

Halal Whale Meat Part of Japan’s Appeal to Muslim Tourists


Japanese restaurant are grappling with the idea of catering to guests who shun pork and alcohol.

halal japan

Japan’s tourism industry is attempting to attract Muslim travelers, offering them prayer rooms, pure silk hijab scarves, and halal-certified whale meat. This, in a country with only about 100, 000 practicing Muslims.

Please help us out :
Will you offer us a hand? Every gift, regardless of size, fuels our future.
Your critical contribution enables us to maintain our independence from shareholders or wealthy owners, allowing us to keep up reporting without bias. It means we can continue to make Jewish Business News available to everyone.
You can support us for as little as $1 via PayPal at [email protected].
Thank you.

“Muslim travelers still do not feel comfortable here, ” Datuk Ibrahim Haji Ahmad Badawi, head of Malaysian food company Brahim’s, told a recent seminar on halal tourism in Tokyo, one of 20 regional conferences being held in Japan on this topic. “The government seems to have understood this.”

The Osaka Chamber of Commerce handed out 5, 000 leaflets as a guide to what Muslims are allowed to eat. Naturally, it’s been a tough concept for the Japanese that kitchens should be pork and alcohol free.

Tourism to Japan is heavily promoted in mainly-Muslim Southeast Asia for the current holy month of Ramadan. In 2013, Japan relaxed visa requirements for travelers from Malaysia and Thailand. Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation in the world, is next.

According to the Japanese National Tourism Organization, 136, 797 Indonesians visited Japan in 2013, up 34.8 percent on the previous year. This compared with 176, 521 Malaysian visitors in 2013, an increase of 35.6 percent.

A number of large hotels are looking to cater to Muslim guests.

Halal supervised Japanese dishes in Tokyo include a “yakiniku” barbecue restaurant, run by Roger Bernard Diaz from Sri Lanka. The restaurant gets reservations from southeast Asia and the Gulf.

Muslims looking to taste whale meat can now enjoy it in Japan, where a whaling factory ship was certified halal-compliant last year. The Japan Halal Association, founded in 2010, grants the status.

Association chairwoman Hind Hitomi Remon, said, “Since 2012, we have issued certificates to 40 companies, and that number is set to rise a lot this year, ” as the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games grow nearer.

Newsletter



Advertisement

You May Also Like

World News

In the 15th Nov 2015 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:   ·         A new Israeli treatment brings hope to relapsed leukemia...

Entertainment

The Movie The Professional is what made Natalie Portman a Lolita.

Travel

After two decades without a rating system in Israel, at the end of 2012 an international tender for hotel rating was published.  Invited to place bids...

VC, Investments

You may not become a millionaire, but there is a lot to learn from George Soros.