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Kimuraya

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kimuraya Sohonten (Japanese: 木村屋總本店) is a bakery which was first established in 1869 as Bun'eidō (文英堂) by a former samurai, Yasubei Kimura. It was then renamed Kimuraya in 1870.

Products

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Kimura invented the anpan sweet bun in 1874 and this became popular with the Emperor and so sold well.[1] The bakery makes about 130 unique products, with some only available on a seasonal basis.[2]

On February 1, 2024, Kimuraya's newest product went on sale on their online store and in Japan's Kanto area supermarkets. Kimuraya reportedly worked its magic with a Japanese electronics company; NEC Corp to make an AI Love Bread. NEC Corp utilized two AI technologies for the project: “NEC Enhanced Speech” for converting speech into text and “NEC Data Enrichment” for generating emotion scores from text data. They then transformed these feelings into various flavors of fluffy steamed bread.[3]

References

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  1. ^ Kazuo Usui (2014), Marketing and Consumption in Modern Japan, Routledge, p. 26, ISBN 9781134350742
  2. ^ Poitras, Gilles (November 22, 2022). Tokyo Stroll: A Guide to City Sidetracks and Easy Explorations. Stone Bridge Press. ISBN 9781611729429.
  3. ^ Toi, Saki (2024-02-14). "A Japanese bakery is using AI to produce 'romance bread' targeted at love-averse youth". CNN. Retrieved 2024-02-14.