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AEON Launches 1,000-Yen Jeans as Japanese Shoppers Cut Back Japanese retailer AEON has entered the low-cost jeans market with a new pair of denim trousers priced at just 1,000 yen before tax, as households face higher prices and become increasingly careful about their spending. The new jeans were launched by AEON Retail on September 8, 2026, as part of an expansion of its low-price Topvalu clothing range. The company is targeting consumers looking for inexpensive everyday clothing at a time when rising living costs are putting pressure on household budgets. AEON says the jeans cost around one-third of the price of its previous denim products. The company has kept the range relatively simple by limiting the materials, colours and styles used, while concentrating production to reduce costs. The jeans are being sold through around 470 AEON and AEON Style stores across Japan, with availability also being expanded through AEON’s online store. The products are being offered as a limited-quantity range rather than as a replacement for the retailer’s wider clothing selection. Women’s, Men’s and Children’s Jeans The new Topvalu denim range includes options for women, men and children. Women’s jeans are available in straight and wide silhouettes, while the men’s version uses a regular-fit design. The women’s range comes in six sizes and three colours, while the men’s jeans are available in 18 size combinations covering different waist and inside-leg measurements. Children’s stretch jeans are also included in the low-price range. AEON says the jeans include stretch functionality and use a blend containing rayon, which is intended to make the material lighter and softer than traditional stiff denim. The company has therefore focused on producing an inexpensive everyday garment rather than competing with premium denim products.

Tokyo’s Square Burger Draws Foreign Tourists With Wagyu, Local Bread and Near-Perfect Reviews A burger restaurant in Tokyo’s Asakusa district is attracting large numbers of international visitors with a menu item that looks quite different from the burgers most people are familiar with. Kadomasu-The Square Burger has built its reputation around a square-shaped burger made with A5-grade wagyu beef, specially prepared bread and ingredients sourced from long-established businesses in the neighborhood. The restaurant says the unusual burger has generated significant attention among foreign tourists visiting Tokyo, with overseas visitors accounting for more than 80 percent of its customers. Its location also puts it in a particularly busy part of the capital, close to Sensoji Temple, one of Asakusa’s best-known tourist attractions. The restaurant’s popularity can also be seen in its online reviews. As of September 2026, Kadomasu-The Square Burger had an average Google rating of 4.9 out of five stars based on more than 2,000 reviews. The rating has helped give the restaurant an impressive online reputation among visitors searching for places to eat in Asakusa. From Kadomasu to The Square Burger The restaurant was not originally focused exclusively on its square burger. It previously operated simply under the name Kadomasu and offered a broader selection of food and drinks, including steak skewers, desserts and beverages. The situation changed after the Square Burger was introduced in the spring of the previous year. According to the restaurant, the new item began attracting considerable attention on social media, particularly among international tourists travelling around Tokyo. The response was strong enough that the restaurant incorporated the name of its signature burger into its own name, becoming Kadomasu-The Square Burger. The change reflects the importance of the burger to the restaurant’s identity and its growing reputation among visitors from outside Japan. The location is particularly well suited to attracting tourists. Asakusa receives large numbers of visitors who come to see Sensoji Temple and explore the surrounding streets, shops and restaurants. Kadomasu is located at 2-7-13 Asakusa in Taito Ward, putting the restaurant within this heavily visited part of Tokyo. Why Is the Burger Square? The shape of the burger is not simply a gimmick. The restaurant’s name provides part of the explanation. In Japanese, “kado” refers to a corner, making the square shape a natural connection to the name Kadomasu. There is also a practical reason for making the burger square. Instead of using a conventional round bun and round patty, the restaurant uses square pieces of specially prepared bread with a matching square patty. The result is immediately recognizable. Customers are not simply being served another standard hamburger with a different topping. The shape, bread and presentation are all intended to make the burger distinct from more familiar fast-food versions. The Square Burger is also cut into four square pieces before it is served. That makes it easier to eat and gives the sandwich a presentation that fits its name. A5 Wagyu Is at the Center The most important ingredient in the Square Burger is the beef. Kadomasu uses A5-grade wagyu for its patties, placing a premium Japanese ingredient at the heart of what is otherwise a familiar international food. Wagyu has become increasingly popular with visitors to Japan, and using it in a burger provides tourists with another way of trying Japanese beef without ordering a traditional steak. The burger also offers customers the option of adding cheddar cheese. A serving of wasabi is provided separately, giving diners the opportunity to add a distinctly Japanese flavor to the rich beef. The combination of wagyu, butter-toasted bread, sauce and optional wasabi creates a burger that is deliberately different from the inexpensive fast-food sandwiches that most tourists might associate with the word burger. It Uses Bread Rather Than a Conventional Bun One of the most unusual aspects of the Square Burger is that the restaurant does not use a conventional hamburger bun. Instead, the sandwich is made using specially produced bread supplied by a local Asakusa bakery. The bakery is Terasawa, which was established in the neighborhood in 1950. The relationship gives the burger another connection with the local community rather than relying entirely on ingredients and products from outside the area. The bread used for the Square Burger is made specifically for the restaurant. Golden sesame seeds are incorporated into the bread, providing a nutty flavor that complements the beef. The bread is then toasted on a flat grill with butter. The cooking process is intended to create a crisp exterior while leaving the inside soft and fluffy. According to the restaurant’s management, the bread is delivered fresh to Kadomasu every morning by Masahiko Terasawa, the bakery’s third-generation owner. That arrangement means the restaurant is not simply buying a standard commercial loaf and cutting it into pieces for its burgers. A Burger Built Around Asakusa The use of Terasawa bread is part of a wider attempt to make the Square Burger specifically connected to Asakusa. Rather than presenting it as another generic gourmet burger in Tokyo, Kadomasu has used businesses from the neighborhood to give the product a local identity. That approach is particularly interesting in a district where tourists can find food from almost every part of Japan and many different countries. By using local suppliers with long histories, the restaurant is attempting to give an international-style food a distinctly Asakusa character. The bread itself is therefore part of the story. Customers are not just buying a burger containing Japanese beef; they are also eating bread made by a bakery that has been part of the neighborhood since the middle of the 20th century. The Sauce Has Its Own Long History The restaurant has also chosen a local partner for its burger sauce. Tokiha Sauce has been part of Asakusa since 1923, making its history even longer than that of the bakery supplying the burger bread. Kadomasu uses Tokiha’s vegetable-based Nama Sauce as the starting point for the sauce used on the Square Burger. Additional ingredients are added before the sauce

Pickle-Flavoured Tart? AI Is Helping Japan’s Convenience Stores Create Unusual New Foods Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used for tasks that go far beyond the technology sector, and in Japan it is now finding a particularly unusual application: helping convenience stores come up with new food products. Major Japanese convenience store chains are experimenting with AI as a source of ideas for products that might not emerge from conventional food development methods. The results include some combinations that sound strange at first, including a pickle-flavoured lemon tart and a French-style canelé containing sweet potato. The experiments come as Japan’s convenience stores compete to keep their food selections interesting in a market where customers have an enormous range of inexpensive meals, snacks and desserts available to them. Rather than simply copying successful products or relying entirely on previous sales data, companies are increasingly asking AI to suggest combinations that human developers might not immediately consider. Lawson Asks AI for Something Unexpected Lawson, one of Japan’s largest convenience store chains, announced a group of new products developed with assistance from artificial intelligence. The company said it wanted to create foods that were not constrained by established ideas or existing market trends. The theme given to the AI was deliberately provocative: “What on earth is this? But it’s delicious.” The idea was to encourage suggestions that might initially seem unusual while still producing combinations that could potentially work as food products. Among the products generated through this process was a pickle-flavoured lemon tart. The combination brings together the sharp acidity and sweetness normally associated with lemon desserts with the salty, sour character of pickles. Lawson also developed a bread roll containing red bean paste, margarine and yogurt cream. Red bean paste is already a familiar ingredient in Japanese sweets and bread products, but combining it with margarine and yogurt cream gives the product a different balance of flavours and textures. AI Was Used to Generate the Ideas Lawson said AI was used during brainstorming rather than being left to independently design finished products. The company specifically said it wanted to generate ideas without relying on past sales figures or market data. That distinction is important. The products were not created by handing the entire development process over to a computer system. Instead, AI was being used as a source of suggestions at an early stage, with people still responsible for deciding which ideas were worth developing. The approach gives food developers a way of exploring a much larger number of combinations. An AI system can rapidly generate unusual pairings based on a prompt, allowing human developers to select ideas that appear sufficiently interesting to investigate further. The pickle-flavoured tart is an example of the kind of combination that can attract attention precisely because it does not sound like a conventional dessert. The Products Are Not Just AI Experiments Although the unusual combinations originated from AI-assisted brainstorming, the finished products still require conventional food development. Human specialists remain involved in deciding whether an idea can actually be made, how it should taste and whether customers are likely to buy it. This means that AI is functioning more like a creative tool than an autonomous food manufacturer. It can propose combinations, but people still have to turn those proposals into products that meet practical requirements. Ingredients have to work together, recipes have to be suitable for large-scale production and products have to survive the logistical demands of being sold through convenience stores. There is also the question of whether customers will actually want to eat something that sounds unusual. A combination may look interesting on paper but fail if the finished product does not taste good or if shoppers are unwilling to spend money on it. FamilyMart Is Taking a Different Approach Lawson is not the only major Japanese convenience store chain experimenting with artificial intelligence. Rival FamilyMart has also been using AI in the development of new desserts. FamilyMart used sales data as part of its AI-assisted product development process. Rather than asking AI to generate ideas without reference to historical information, the company fed sales data into the system to help identify a product that was both unusual and likely to sell. The result was a French-style canelé made with dough containing sweet potato puree and topped with caramel sauce. A canelé is a small French pastry traditionally associated with Bordeaux. It has a dark caramelized exterior and a soft, custard-like interior, making it a very different product from the typical rice balls and sandwiches found in Japanese convenience stores. FamilyMart’s version adds sweet potato puree to the dough and finishes the pastry with caramel sauce, creating a dessert that combines a French pastry format with flavours strongly associated with Japanese autumn foods. FamilyMart Wants Products That Will Sell FamilyMart’s approach highlights one of the main differences between using AI for creative brainstorming and using it as a commercial forecasting tool. The company told AFP that it wanted to create something new while also developing a product that was likely to sell. Sales data therefore became part of the information used in the development process. As with Lawson, however, the AI did not replace the company’s food specialists. Human employees remained involved in turning the computer-generated ideas into an actual product. The canelé is scheduled for nationwide sale, giving FamilyMart an opportunity to see whether an AI-assisted product can perform successfully across its large network of stores. FamilyMart Already Tested AI With a Dessert The sweet potato canelé is not FamilyMart’s first attempt to use artificial intelligence for food development. The company conducted an earlier experiment in July with a biscuit sandwich filled with thick milk cream. That product was treated as a test of whether AI-assisted development could produce something customers actually wanted to buy. FamilyMart said the experiment was successful, encouraging the company to continue exploring the technology. The chain subsequently decided to pursue AI-assisted product development more seriously and planned to introduce additional products developed using the technology. The