Blog

It’s been quite a year for the Feng Sushi team. Our website is has just passed its first birthday and a lot can happen in a year so we thought we’d take this opportunity to look back over our first 12 months in the digital world. January saw the reopening of our Chalk Farm branch in Jaunary 2011. In February we joined Sustainable Fish City to lend our support to making London the first sustainable fish city in the world. With March came the news of the devastating effects of Japan’s tsunami and we fundraised throughout the year to show our support: by sponsoring the Japan Tsunami Fund, donating sushi sales to Japan’s Red Cross and supplying the sushi for the Japanese Auction in August. September saw us release YouTube ‘How to Make Sushi’ videos and the introduction of our seasonal menus. Then there were our greatest success stories: the opening of Billingsgatwhen we blogged on the market’s fascinating history, our presence at Hyper Japan festival where we were finalists in the Sushi awards in July and culminating in our becoming 'Winner of the Sustainable City Award 2011/12' in March 2012. This year we hope to go from strength to strength.

Following the devastating tsunami in Japan, Architecture for Humanity is joining forces with the Hotshoe Gallery to host a charity print sale and auction to raise funds to aid long-term reconstruction in Sendai. Architecture for Humanity is a global charity that works with communities around the world to help improve lives, particularly following natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, the floods in Pakistan and now the recent tsunami in Japan. Previous projects have included building a Football for Hope Centre in Rwanda following the genocide in 1994, a school in Haiti that incorporates rainwater harvesting and composting latrines, and a gallery and teaching facility in New Orleans.

In March of this year a devastating tsunami hit northern Japan, killing more than 15,000 people. Over 9,000 are still missing. More than 116,000 people are living in shelters where they need food, and access to basic sanitation and medication. There are plans to build 100,000 temporary homes.

To add to Japan’s woes, over 58 million acres of farmland were covered by seawater. The process to remove the salt has begun, but it could take up to three years. Worse still is the ongoing uncertainty surrounding the safety of the nuclear power plants. The damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant will be closed by the end of the year but a recent attempt to restore the cooling system was suspended because nuclear fuel rods had damaged their containment vessel, causing 3,000 tons of contaminated water to escape.