There, in the heart of the concrete jungle that is Tokyo's Otemachi financial district, in the second-floor basement abyss of a 27-story building, is nothing less than . . . a farm.

But, as it's neither a food company's test bed for cutting-edge agritechnology, nor a research institute's lab for biotechnology experiments, what exactly is going on here?

"We see this space as a showroom of farming in the midst of a metropolis," said Keisuke Nemoto, manager of the PR and planning division of Pasona Inc., a staffing agency which opened the underground farm in February.