Why Japan Is Taking Wagyu, Tea and Rice to Warsaw in Search of Its Next Food Markets

Japan’s most familiar food-export destinations are easy to name: the United States, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China and the wealthy Asian cities where sushi, wagyu, sake and matcha have been established for years. The harder question is where the next layer of growth will come from.

On September 15, the Japan External Trade Organization is scheduled to hold its 2026 Japanese food business meeting in Warsaw. Eighteen Japanese suppliers are set to present products ranging from alcoholic beverages, tea and rice to seasonings, seafood and wagyu. Twenty-three buyers from seven countries — Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Austria, the Czech Republic, Romania and the Netherlands — are on the announced participant list. JETRO has planned more than 100 pre-arranged meetings in the morning, followed by an open tasting and business session for buyers, restaurants and retailers.^[1]

At the time this report was researched, JETRO had not yet published post-event results from the September 15 meeting. Japan.co.jp therefore does not attribute sales, contracts or buyer reactions to the 2026 event that have not been officially reported. The more useful story is the strategy behind it: why Poland has become a test market for Japan’s effort to diversify food exports away from a relatively small group of dominant destinations.

Eighteen suppliers, twenty-three buyers

The meeting is scheduled for Warsaw’s MOXO Restaurant & Club. The Japanese side includes companies from Aomori to Fukuoka: tofu and processed-food producers, seafood companies, rice businesses, sake breweries, a Kyoto tea company, seasonings suppliers and export specialists.^[1]

The participating Japanese list includes Taishi Food, Ajinokakunoya, Kikunotsukasa Sake, Dewatsuru Sake, Ogata Beikoku, Iga越, Kyoeiseicha, Umenoyado Brewery and Takahashi Shoten, among others. The significance is not one star product. It is the attempt to show buyers a usable Japanese-food assortment rather than a single category.^[1]

Why Warsaw?

JETRO describes Central and Eastern Europe as a region with more than 120 million people and rising purchasing power. It says Poland has about 890 Japanese restaurants, while a 2026 planning document cites at least 3,000 Japanese restaurants across the wider Central and Eastern European region. These are JETRO estimates rather than official restaurant censuses, but they indicate the market depth that Japanese exporters believe is emerging.^[2][3]

Poland also has a logistical advantage. It sits inside the EU single market and functions as a distribution hub for neighboring economies. The buyer list makes the strategy visible: a supplier can travel to one meeting in Warsaw and sit down not only with Polish importers but also companies serving the Czech Republic, Romania, the Baltics, Austria and other nearby markets.^[1]

In that sense, Warsaw is being used as a business-matching hub rather than merely a destination for Polish consumption.

The program began as a response to a seafood shock

There is a direct line from the 2023 release of ALPS-treated water at Fukushima Daiichi to this year’s much broader food event. After changes in the export environment for Japanese seafood, JETRO ran seafood-promotion programs in Poland in fiscal 2023 and fiscal 2024 as part of an effort to diversify destinations.^[1]

According to JETRO, buyers in the region expressed interest not only in seafood but in a wider range of Japanese food, and asked for more business opportunities. In fiscal 2025 the program expanded to agricultural, forestry, fishery and food products generally. The 2026 event marks the fourth consecutive year of this Poland-centered effort.^[1]

What began as risk diversification for seafood is becoming a broader market-development strategy.

Japan’s food exports reached ¥1.7 trillion in 2025

Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries says agricultural, forestry, fishery and food exports reached ¥1.7005 trillion in 2025, up 12.8% from the previous year and a record for the 13th consecutive year. The United States was the largest destination at ¥276.2 billion, followed by Hong Kong at ¥222.8 billion, Taiwan at ¥181.2 billion and China at ¥179.9 billion. Beef, rice and green tea were among products that reached record export values.^[4]

Growth continued into 2026. First-half exports reached ¥897.7 billion, 10.9% above the same period a year earlier and another first-half record.^[5]

The gap is obvious. Reaching ¥5 trillion would require growth on a scale that cannot easily come from the same handful of top destinations alone.

Japan’s agriculture minister has identified concentration as a weakness

When discussing the country’s failure to reach its previous ¥2 trillion 2025 target, Agriculture Minister Norikazu Suzuki pointed to three structural problems: roughly half of exports were concentrated in the top four countries and regions; Japanese suppliers had not penetrated local, non-Japanese distribution channels deeply enough; and producers sometimes could not supply the volume or price demanded overseas.^[7]

That diagnosis explains the logic of Warsaw better than any slogan about Japanese cuisine. A smaller market can still be strategically valuable if it reduces dependence on a few large destinations and creates routes into local distribution systems.

Diversification is therefore both a growth policy and a risk-management policy. Regulatory changes, diplomatic disputes, recessions and currency movements in one country become less damaging when exporters have multiple functioning markets.

Last year’s Warsaw meeting produced more than tastings

JETRO’s recruitment materials for the 2026 event say the previous Warsaw business meeting produced more than 90 negotiations and more than 50 cases that resulted in contracts or were considered to have meaningful contracting potential. JETRO documents are not fully consistent on the prior year’s buyer headcount, so Japan.co.jp does not use that figure for year-on-year comparison.^[2]

The format matters. The morning session is not a consumer food festival. Buyers with procurement roles are matched to suppliers for seated business meetings. The afternoon broadens the audience to importers, distributors, restaurant operators and retailers who can taste products and discuss possible distribution.

For a small Japanese producer, the hardest problem is rarely finding somebody abroad who says a product tastes good. It is finding an importer who can clear customs, warehouse the product, sell it repeatedly and pay for it.

Wagyu can command a premium, but it carries regulatory weight

Beef is one of Japan’s strongest premium-export stories. MAFF has documented a long-term rise in beef exports as wagyu’s reputation has spread internationally. But access to the EU is not automatic. Animal products must meet EU sanitary and animal-health rules, which can include requirements relating to approved establishments, certification and official controls.^[8][9]

For a European buyer, “wagyu” is therefore only the first part of the proposition. The practical questions include cut specifications, certification, cold-chain management, reliable quantities and landed price. A product that cannot be supplied consistently is not a commercial line, however strong its brand.

Tea arrives with a global matcha tailwind

Green tea was another record export category in 2025. MAFF says green-tea export value has set successive records since 2019 amid global demand for matcha and wider interest in Japanese tea. In July 2026, Japan registered “Japanese Tea” as a national geographical indication, the first such GI covering Japan as the production area for tea.^[4][10]

Domestic GI registration should not be confused with automatic EU protection. EU protection for Japanese GIs proceeds through the Japan-EU EPA’s mutual-protection mechanism. As of March 2026, MAFF listed 107 Japanese agricultural GIs protected in the EU, but the newly registered “Japanese Tea” would require the relevant international process before Japan.co.jp could describe it as protected across the EU.^[11]

Tea nevertheless has practical advantages in a new market. It does not require frozen distribution, generally has a longer shelf life than fresh foods, and can enter cafés and dessert businesses as an ingredient as well as being sold as a beverage.

Rice requires exporting a way of eating, not just a bag of grain

The Warsaw program extends into September 16 through a separate meeting co-hosted with the Japan Rice and Rice Industry Export Promotion Association. JETRO says 16 member companies and roughly 35 buyers from seven countries are expected. The program includes a demonstration of how to cook Japanese rice and offers the cooked rice as onigiri.^[1]

That is a revealing export tactic. Rice quality depends on more than the grain itself. Water, washing, soaking, cooking equipment and holding conditions all shape what the customer experiences. A premium product can be undermined if the overseas kitchen reproduces it badly.

In 2025, rice and rice-processed-product exports reached ¥68.8 billion; rice alone reached ¥13.9 billion. Japan’s government has set a 2030 target of 353,000 tonnes for exports of rice, packaged rice, rice flour and rice-flour products.^[12]

Sake has a trade-policy advantage in the EU

The Japan-EU Economic Partnership Agreement entered into force in February 2019. Among its market-access provisions, the EU immediately eliminated tariffs on Japanese alcoholic beverages and agreed to protect Japanese liquor geographical indications including “Nihonshu” under the GI framework.^[13]

That does not mean a Japanese brewery automatically gains shelf space in Warsaw or Prague. Alcohol distribution still depends on national taxes, licensing, importers, wholesalers and local drinking habits. But the EPA removed an important layer of trade friction and gave producers a stronger framework for protecting origin and brand identity.

The EU is one market, but food compliance is not one simple form

The attraction of Poland includes access to the EU single market, but exporters should not mistake that for frictionless entry. Rules vary by product. Foods containing animal-origin ingredients can trigger requirements involving approved-country lists, approved establishments, health certification and border controls. Composite foods can be especially complicated because the rules depend on their ingredients and processing.^[9]

One major post-Fukushima burden did disappear in 2023. The EU ended the special requirement for Japanese food shipments to carry radioactive-material testing certificates and certificates of origin that had applied to specified products and prefectures. The removal was significant, but ordinary food-safety, labeling and animal-health rules remained in force.^[14]

Eight hundred and ninety Japanese restaurants are only the opening

The estimate of 890 Japanese restaurants in Poland sounds impressive, but restaurant count is not the same as Japanese export demand. A sushi restaurant may buy rice, soy sauce or seasonings made in Europe or sourced from other Asian countries. The existence of Japanese cuisine does not guarantee the use of Japanese-origin ingredients.

Exporters therefore have to create a reason for buyers to pay the additional freight, compliance and inventory costs associated with Japanese origin. Depending on the product, that reason may be provenance, quality, GI protection, craftsmanship, rarity, flavor, health positioning or the credibility of a specific producer.

The opportunity appears when consumers move from wanting something “Japanese-style” to asking whether it was actually made or grown in Japan.

A weak yen is not an export strategy

Currency can help. A weaker yen can make Japanese goods cheaper in foreign currency. But food export economics also include farm-gate or factory prices, packaging, international freight, refrigeration, importer margins, retail margins, taxes and regulatory costs.

As exports grow, supply capacity becomes just as important as demand. That was one of the agriculture minister’s explanations for missing the prior ¥2 trillion target: some suppliers could not meet the quantities or prices overseas buyers required.^[7]

A successful meeting in Warsaw therefore creates a new problem for the supplier: can it fill the second order, the tenth order and the larger order that follows if the product succeeds?

The ¥5 trillion goal needs a thicker layer of second-tier markets

Japan.co.jp’s analysis is that the strategic value of the Poland program lies less in any single year’s sales than in the creation of what might be called second-tier markets. Concentrating on the United States, Hong Kong and other established destinations can produce faster short-term gains. It also leaves the export system exposed.

A ¥5 trillion industry will require many markets that are individually smaller but collectively substantial. Central and Eastern Europe fits that model. Japanese food is less mature in parts of the region than it is in Western Europe, but that can give early suppliers and importers room to shape distribution before the market becomes crowded.

The correct measure of success will not be how many people tasted wagyu or matcha in Warsaw. It will be what remains six months later: repeat orders, additional cities, new retail listings, more products per importer and suppliers that can meet demand without lowering quality.

The real export is a distribution route

Wagyu, tea, rice, sake and seafood make an attractive tasting table. But the durable economic product is the route behind them: the importer, warehouse, wholesaler, restaurant, retailer and repeat customer.

Japan’s Poland effort began as a response to the need to diversify seafood markets after a geopolitical and regulatory shock. By 2026 it has evolved into a broader effort to build channels for Japanese food across Central and Eastern Europe.

Warsaw may not yet rival New York, Hong Kong or Paris as a Japanese-food market. That is precisely why it matters. If Japan is serious about turning ¥1.7 trillion of food exports into ¥5 trillion, the next phase cannot depend only on places where Japanese food has already won. It has to build markets where the distribution system is still being made.