History of INTERNASHOKUNAL

In the spring of 2005 Nobutaka Kikuchi, at that time still a university student, was involved in volunteer work guiding visitors from Saudi Arabia around Osaka. The visitors were unable to eat pork due to religious reasons, and Nobutaka was unable to find a suitable Japanese restaurant for them to eat at. No matter how many times he told them something was okay, with no way of checking the precise contents of the food there was nothing that they could eat with peace of mind. This experience set Nobutaka thinking, and he set about putting together foreign language ingredients labels, which were used at his university’s annual festival which always sees many international students taking part. Seeing that this idea still had limitations, he proposed the design of food pictograms to more effectively inform people of ingredients used. Gradually these came to be used in some restaurants and on event menus. Activities soon spread to the provision of workshops at schools and local government offices to teach food culture from around the world.