JAPAN

Tokyo Shoppers Gobble Up American Rice: The rice, subject of longtime U.S-Japan trade talks, appeared in Tokyo supermarkets last week and vanished again before anyone knew it. At $1.50 a pound, half the price of Japanese rice, the bags of California rice piled high at the Daiei supermarket in the Tokyo district of Meguro sold out in just a few hours. Similar scenes occurred in many other stores around Tokyo and Osaka, the Jiji news agency said. Foreign rice goes on full-fledged sale at the end of the month. In October, the Japanese government, suffering from the worst harvest since the 1950s, decided to import 200 metric tons of rice, mostly from the United States, China and Thailand.