It was in November 1998 when Shoichiro Sugimura first became interested in the "soba" (buckwheat noodle) business.
Sugimura, 57, a manager of a security company in Ito, Shizuoka Prefecture, was attending the Southeast Asia Forum in Yokohama when he learned about a program that encourages farmers in the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia to stop growing poppies for the drug trade and instead grow buckwheat.
Sugimura's idea was to use that buckwheat to make handmade soba, a quintessentially Japanese food, in Thailand for local consumption.
The Golden Triangle, which straddles Thailand, Myanmar and Laos, is one of the world's top sources of opium and heroin.