Short But Amazing Step Forward in Re-Greening the Planet!

Extraordinary Inspiration Leads
To Seed-Bearing Clay Ball Program

Boyé Lafayette De Mente

KAMAKURA, JAPAN - In 2003 a film-school teacher named Ryuji Enokida had an extraordinary inspiration that is now helping to restore plants and trees to areas that had become barren deserts, using an astonishingly simple process that requires no watering and no fertilizer.

It somehow occurred to teacher Enokida that plant and tree seeds encased in small balls of clay would germinate and grow when spread around in arid areas that had become virtually lifeless.

After testing the idea and proving that it worked, Enokida formed a group within his existing Yokohama Art Project to introduce the process to the world. He teamed-up with a film-maker friend, went to a Kenya diplomat and pitched the idea of re-greening an area outside of Nairobi that had once been heavily forested but had turned into a dry, dead area when all of the trees were cut down.

With approval from the Kenyan official Enokida and his group spread hundreds of clay balls (about one inch in diameter) embedded with acacia, eucalyptus and other plant and tree seeds in a 1-hectare (2.47 acre) plot of barren land.

Within one year trees from the balls of clay were 1.5 meters high and were thriving without having been fertilized or watered! Not only were the trees thriving, but the baked and cracked earth had regained some moisture.

The secret of this miraculous-sounding growth was that the difference in the day-and-night temperatures resulted in dew forming inside the balls at night, causing the seeds to germinate and put roots down into the ground. Being embedded in clay, the seeds were protected from the extreme heat and dryness and from being eaten by birds and other predators.

Local Kenyan residents were shocked that the little seed-bearing balls of clay actually turned the plot of land green, and asked that the project be expanded into other desert areas in the country. Seeds planted in this manner near the equator grew taller than the average person within one year.

The program has now been spread to China, first in the Beijing area, and could play a major role in helping to reforest huge areas of China that are bare of plant life because of cutting and logging.

Enokida’s film-making friend has prepared a documentary on the project to help raise money for the enterprise. This is something that the big foundations and environmentalists should get behind and turn into a worldwide wave of greening the barren areas of the planet. Information about the Yokohama Art Project is available on the Web.
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To see a list and descriptions of 30-plus books on Japan by the author, access his personal website at: http://www.phoenixbookspublishers.com/.

The Amazing Greening of Japan!

Tokyo Rooftops
Sprouting Rice and Vegetables!

Boyé Lafayette De Mente

TOKYO--By all accounts, Tokyo is one of the world’s most extraordinary cities in terms of facilities and amenities that include more restaurants, more bars, more clubs, more department stores, more business centers, more subways and more commuter trains than any other city on the planet—to name just a few of the things that are more conspicuous.

Now, the city has undertaken a massive program to turn the huge urban area into an oasis of rooftop and open-field gardens, and it is well underway.

The urban gardens of Tokyo are not just for show. Altogether they include virtually all of the popular table vegetables as well as rice—still a major staple of the diet of most Japanese.

Tokyo’s Metropolitan Government has taken the lead in promoting this greening campaign by constructing a 770-square meter garden on the rooftop of its high-rise headquarters building in Shinjuku on the west side of town.

The city has launched a major program to increase the amount of green space in its 23 wards from the present 29 percent to 32 percent over the next seven years. This green space includes forests, rivers, rice paddies and gardens on office buildings.

A city ordinance requires that all new, expanded, or improved buildings in the city that have 3,000 square meters of space or more must cover at least 20 percent of their land and rooftops with plants, trees, turf or other foliage.

In 2006 the famed Isetan Department Store replaced the amusement rides it had on its rooftop with a garden—which not only attracts more visitors than the amusement center did, it also brought summertime rooftop temperatures down by 18 degrees.

In May of 2007 school children and young women planted a rice paddy on top of one of the signature Mori Building towers in Roppongi—known around the world as one of the city’s entertainment districts.

Another feature of this phenomenon has been the opening of membership gardens in open areas of the outlying wards. These gardens that include clubhouses where members can change into their work clothes, shower, eat, drink, exchange information and socialize.

One of the largest of these new communal gardens is located in Seijo, an upscale residential area in Setagaya Ward just 15 minutes from the core of Tokyo. The 500 square meter walled-in area, called Agris Seijo, is divided into 300 plots to accommodate members who pay annual fees of $1,120.

For an additional fee, staff members of the club take care of the individual gardens of members when go on vacation, or are away on business trips, and cannot tend their gardens themselves.

Suburban cities like Musashino have gotten into the act with garden centers on city property that also feature a variety of seasonal agricultural events that residents may attend free of charge.

Pasona, Inc., the well-known temporary staffing company, has inaugurated a training program for people who want to get an Agri-MBA. Classes are given three times a week at the company’s headquarters building in Otemachi, one of Tokyo’s premiere business centers. The course includes a 7-day training session on a working farm.

Some of the students say they are taking the course to get out of the business rat-race and make their living farming.

This new phenomenon, known as “hobby farming,” is itself becoming a big business in Japan, and it augurs well for the growing millions of people who feel—and are!—trapped by the prevailing economic system and are yearning for a saner, simpler life.

Japan Takes Lead in Bringing Shopping to Your Fingers!

Digital Shopping

Is Revolutionizing Retail Business!

Boyé Lafayette De Mente

TOKYO -- Some time in the near future the world’s great department stores could become little more than drop-ship warehouses and boutiques and other stores could get few if any live shoppers…and all because of tiny all-purpose mobile phones.

This phenomenon has already begun in Japan, where shopping by mobile phone is already large and is growing at the rate of 40 percent a year.

According to government data, mobile phone shopping in 2006 reached the trillion yen mark, while the sales at department stores and shops declined. Just one online company, Rakuten Ichiba, did 460 billion yen in mobile phone sales that year.

More and more Japanese are now doing their basic shopping—for apparel, cosmetics, food, furniture, etc.—on their mobile phones while they are on their way to work, at work, in restaurants and pubs and other places, and the whole process takes only a few minutes at most.

Young women, who are always the trend leaders in virtually everything new that occurs in Japan’s huge consumer market, are in the forefront of this movement, which means it is real, it is solid, and it will grow—and manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers who ignore it will be left behind.

All signs indicate that 2006 was the tipping point for mobile phone shopping in Japan, and this movement will inevitably spread around the world as the cost of gas goes up, highways and streets become more clogged with traffic and there is growing pressure for people to drive less in order to reduce pollution.

The next country to undergo this mobile phone shopping revolution will no doubt be South Korea, the most digitally connected country in the world—and I can see it happening in China and in India as entrepreneurs in those countries seek to skip the slow and inefficient retailing process that has been characteristic of market economies since the 1880s.

One of the facets of shopping by mobile phone is that it can make a huge success of a product that hasn’t been moving in a matter of days just by making it available online.

In Japan big-name international companies like Procter & Gamble are taking advantage of this new phenomenon by promoting their cosmetic lines on mobile phones, targeting women in their 20s.

What this phenomenon may mean to the retailing industry in the world at large can be mind-boggling—not to mention frightening if it fails to keep up with the times. Instead of maintaining brick-and-mortar places, stores will have to transform themselves into warehouses that ship their goods to individual consumers—or manufacturers could replace the retailing and wholesaling businesses altogether by taking on the role of shippers as well as manufacturers.

Dell, the computer giant, Amazon.com and many other companies have already proven conclusively that people will shop online if it is made easy and secure.

This transition of the way of shopping is not going to go away. The only questions are how rapidly is it going to continue to grow, and at what point will it no longer be feasible for present-day retailers to keep their doors open.

One of the greatest benefits of digital shopping is that hundreds of millions of people would not have to get into their cars and go shopping every day or every week. This in itself would have a profound affect that would encompass the automobile industry and the oil and gas industries—which combined, make up a huge percentage of the world’s economic activity.

Talk about computers changing the world! Just wait until even more enhanced mobile phones are in the hands of just half of the world’s population!