木内酒造は1823 (文政6年), 常陸の国, 那珂郡鴻巣村の庄屋, 木内儀兵衛によって蔵の歴史が始まった。儀兵衛は水戸藩の藤田東湖と姻戚関係にあり, 尊王思想を支援し, 酒の名を「菊盛」とした。その基本にはすべて「こだわり」がある。顔が見える人々により作られた最上の原料と, 創業以来枯れを知らない井戸水。これらの材料と優れた技術が組み合わさり, こだわりの旨さが表現されている。
木内酒造の歴史に新たに加わったのが,「常陸野ネストビール」である。平成6年, 酒造法が改正され, 膨大な量でなくてもビールの醸造ができるようになり, このビールが誕生した.日本酒造りで磨き抜かれた技と, 世界中からこだわりの眼で選んだ原料により最高の味を導きだした.ドイツ, イギリス, アメリカと, 世界のコンテストで金賞を連続受賞, 世界進出が本格化している木内酒造にその経営方針についてお伺いした。

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The attractive retail activities of the underground shopping streets on the cities of Japan are one of the most famous in the world, the underground shopping streets provide spaces for activity for more than one eighth of all Japanese population including businessmen, passengers and shoppers. There are one hundred and forty-three underground shopping streets which carry out retail business activities among one hundred and forty-six underground streets in all Japan.
The result of the author's study on the underground shopping streets are summarized as follows :
(1) The underground shopping streets are composed of the pure collective stores and they occupy less space ratio for selling compared with the space ratio occupied by plaza, streets and others on the underground streets. The special trend of the flow of pedestrians on the underground shopping streets such as increase of passers-by in the evening on weekdays can explain that they have the characters of the amusement quarters actually and mostly composed of restaurants, tea-rooms, bars, groceries and confectionaries.
The underground shopping streets located near at central business districts involve more shops selling shopping goods (60%) than shops selling articles such as foods, cakes and drinkings (40%) compared with the underground shopping streets located on railway terminals which involve 40% shops selling shopping goods while there are 60% shops selling foods, cakes and drinkings.
And, though the varieties of the land value on the central shopping streets in the cities are generally remarkable, the ones on the underground shopping streets are less discriminated, and in view point of the variety of the land value, the ranking of the underground shopping streets corresponds to the secondary and third class shopping streets in the city region.
From the fact the underground shopping streets provide not only for the objects of shopping customers but also for those of amenity seekers and that the characters of amenity exceeds those provided by central shopping streets, they may be defined to be the amusement quarters.
(2) When the population of the city surpasses 200, 000, there emerges underground selling floors in some business establishments in central shopping streets, and they come to form a conglomeration of underground selling floors resulting to an underground shopping streets.
Three types of underground shopping streets are observed according to the grades of their development :
(1) The first underground selling floors of railway stationbuilding and business-building. The enlarged space floors from those of type (1). (3) The underground shopping streets which generally command more than 10, 000 square metres in space and involve more than 100 in numbers of stores and establishments. And type (3) will be divided in the following three subtypes ; (a) the first selling underground floors located at railway station plaza, city plaza and their extended streets. (b) the first and second underground selling floors located at type (1). (c) the first underground selling floors compounded with type (1) and type (2).
The ratio of plazas and streets to selling quarters has the trend to increase from type (1) to type (3) as they develop and this phenomenon seems to show the increase of the character of amenity.
(3) The existing numbers of underground floors in department stores in a district closely related to the scope of the underground shopping streets, and those cities whose departmentstores have come to develop underground floors give the formation of underground shopping streets. The underground shopping streets which are attributed to type (1) correspond to D class (30-49) and E class (1-29) in terms of classification according to the numbers of stores and establishments in cities populated more than 200, 000.

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The purpose of this paper is to clarify the local residential environment of the elderly in Japanese cities, and to provide an introduction to ‘food deserts’. The case-study city is Mito City, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. Food desert issues represent a social exclusion problem. These issues include access to food for low-income households in low-income neighborhoods, particularly to food that is integral to a healthy diet. These issues are openly discussed outside Japan, especially in European countries. Food deserts are defined as, “those areas where car-less residents, unable to reach out-of-town supermarkets, depend on the corner shop, where prices are high, products are processed and fresh fruit and vegetables are poor or non-existent.” It has further been stated that, “the increasing tendency toward out-of-town supermarkets has led to the creation of ‘food deserts’, where cheap and varied food is accessible only to those who have private transport or are able to pay the costs of public transport if it is available.” In the UK, fatal diseases such as cerebrovascular disease and breast and lung cancer have been linked to poor nutrition, which in turn is linked to food deserts. In addition, these social exclusion issues often lead to crime, violence, and terrorism.

The main factors that cause European food desert problems are social exclusion and poor access to food retailers. We find similar factors in Japanese cities. Japan is facing a crisis resulting from a rapidly aging population, and many elderly people live in downtown districts. A decline in downtown shops is notable. As a result, a food deprivation problem occurs for many elderly people living downtown in Japanese cities. This paper provides an introduction to the Japanese food desert issue, based on a case study of Mito City, Ibaraki Prefecture. People over the age of 65 in the CBD of Mito comprise 25.4% of the residents. Many neighborhood fresh-food stores have closed since the 1990s.

The authors studied food retail access using a GIS (Geographical Information System) and found large food deprivation areas around the CBD of Mito City. Subsequent interviews and questionnaire surveys in these areas clarified the residential environment of the elderly. Many elderly people from inner Mito travel more than three kilometers each way, by bicycle or on foot, to go shopping. They shop only once or twice per week, and their daily consumption of fresh vegetables and fruit is less than half that of the national average.

There is little doubt the elderly in inner Mito are facing a nutrition deprivation problem that is a food desert issue. Some European studies have considered the effectiveness of large-scale, retailer-oriented solutions to such problems. However, a strategy for tackling the issue of Japanese food deserts must be considered from a local perspective. Yet Japanese studies have just begun.

This is a case study of a provincial city, but similar problems may also occur in other metropolitan centers and rural areas. We must first define Japanese food desert issues and then develop a research agenda to address them.

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