MISSION TO JAPAN

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30879, 12 October 1965, Page 9

MISSION TO JAPAN

I Exhibition Visited (Special Crspdt. N.Z.P.A.) TOKYO, October 10. The New Zealand first economic and good-will mission to Japan went shopping with 250,000 other customers today at the Seibu department store, one of the largest in Tokyo. The members of the 10-man mission, led by Sir John Ormond, the chairman of the New Zealand Meat Producers’ Board, attended the opening of a special exhibition and sale of New Zealand foodstuffs. For the first time canned and frozen vegetables, butter and cheese from New Zealand were on sale, and the various displays in the store were inspected by the mission. Lady Ormond faced the television cameras as she sampled, along with hundreds of housewives, New Zealand mutton and lamb cooked by the Japanese demonstrators. Welcoming the mission, the vice-president of the store, Mr T. Toga, said that Seibu had 250,000 customers on a Sunday—the busiest shopping day of the week—and that annual sales totalled about £4O million.

This was the first event in a very full schedule for the mission, which tomorrow will begin a round of calls on Government and commercial leaders and will meet the press. Their visit will last 17 days. The welcome given at Tokyo airport by officials of the Foreign Office and by the New Zealand Ambassador in Japan, Mr John Scott, was a major item on this morning’s television news in Tokyo.