The mood in the room was relaxed, if busy, but Lee felt the responsibilities of duty: this was not only her first time in Hungary, it was her first time representing Ujinotsuyu Seicha, a venerable Japanese green tea company founded 230 years ago, and based in Kyoto.
In typical Japanese style, Ujinotsuyu Seicha painstakingly assesses and examines every detail of its production, from the plantation bush to enclosing its tea bags in aluminum foil to preserve even the faintest of flavors. Inevitably, again, as is typically Japanese, with every product, there comes a history not easily explainable to a potential client hailing from a far-off culture.
“Promotion is absolutely one of the hardest parts when introducing authentic Japanese tea, especially where people are not so used to drinking the beverage,” Lee told the Budapest Business Journal.
However, perhaps due to the steadily growing interest in international cuisine in today’s Hungary, Lee hopes for concrete success.
“This time, I got to talk to several business owners who each had an amazing passion for tea education, so I am excited to keep in touch with them. This event was a very precious opportunity to kick off and to raise peoples’ awareness of Japanese tea,” she said.
It’s the kind of news that is music to the ears of Yasunari Miyauchi, general director of the Japanese External Trade Organization (Jetro) office in Budapest, which helped arrange the visit of Lee and others to Hungary.
“I think many Japanese food companies are interested in Hungary and all Central European countries. There are opportunities, so I think [the promotion] was basically successful. Some companies probably had some orders; the amount is not so big, but they will have results. […] Japanese food is one of the four main pillars, areas of focus, for Jetro,” he told the BBJ.
However, in Hungary, mention of Japan is usually associated with automakers, and for good reason: Suzuki has had a significant manufacturing operation in the country at its base in Esztergom, 47 km northwest of Budapest by road, since the early 1990s. Its 2,800 employees produced revenues of almost EUR 2.9 billion, according to the latest 2023 figures.
Miyauchi calculates that 50-60 Japanese companies have operations in Hungary within the auto sector, including the growing electric vehicle battery market.
These include recent arrivals, such as Foster Electric, which manufactures automobile sound equipment from its base in Mór, 85 km southwest of the Hungarian capital, and Nippon Paper, which has established a chemical plant in Vácrátót, 44 km northwest of Budapest. Producing cellulose-based additives for batteries and with a workforce of 60, this plant is expected to bring annual sales of EUR 50 million when production is in full swing.
Further afield, Seiren Hungary, with its EUR 43 mln plant in Pécs, 198 km southwest of Budapest, has been producing synthetic leather for car seats since 2023.
“The size is a bit small in comparison to some of the Chinese and Korean mega-investments, but some Japanese companies are still investing here in Hungary,” Miyauchi is keen to point out. More may be in the pipeline: Suzuki is understood to be mulling manufacturing bases for new EV hybrid models, for example, but with no decisions yet made public as to where.
However, trends in recent years have not encouraged Japanese investment in manufacturing, Miyauchi notes, citing inflation and wage growth as prime concerns.
“Some Japanese companies have considered new investment here, but others have given up because of increased costs. Their eyes are looking to the Balkans or North Africa because this kind of automotive industry company is very cost-sensitive,” he says.
Asked if he could estimate the percentage of companies with serious intentions of investing in Hungary that later withdrew, Miyauchi answered: “I think when my predecessor was here one year ago, more than 10 companies were investigating [possibilities]; at least Hungary was one of the candidate countries. But now I think almost no companies are [interested] because the inflation is too high for them.”
There are also concerns about fast-changing regulations, with little time to adjust to the new conditions, an even bigger issue in a country where consultation and consensus are valued even more highly than in Western cultures.
“Japanese companies take time to consider their decisions, but once we decide, we come here, and we like to stay, and not leave. That’s the Japanese style,” he said.
It may come as a surprise to many outside the specific cultural bubble, but Japanese animation films, essentially comic character stories made into film, have an almost cult following among European youth, including Hungarians.
“Whenever I meet young Hungarian people who speak Japanese, I always ask why they have learned the language, and many simply reply: ‘I love Japanese anime.’ It was very surprising for me to hear this at first because for Hungarian people to learn Japanese, it’s such a difficult language,’ says Jetro’s Yasunari Miyauchi.
However, the interest in such animations, which inevitably tend to use relatively simple language, has spawned numerous websites and social media groups globally. Though chiefly attracting younger people, these naturally promote understanding and awareness of Japan.
“In that sense, as Jetro, we like to [support] Japanese content [films]. The Japanese Foundation [responsible for culture] has an office and library on Oktogon. Culture is one of the very important elements for our business promotion,” Miyauchi stresses.
Yasunari Miyauchi, 56, was born in Kagoshima prefecture, on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu and graduated in economics at the prefecture’s university.
Joining Jetro in 1991, he served in the Fukuoka and Miyazaki offices (both on Japan’s Kyushu island) and abroad in Sydney, Toronto, and now Budapest.
Miyauchi is married with two daughters. His wife keenly appreciates Hungarian embroidery, a favored interest of Japanese women.
Asked for his favorite sake, Miyauchi confessed he prefers shōchū, the Japanese rice spirit for which his hometown is famous.
“We can see Japanese shōchū in stores here, sometimes, but it’s very expensive, 10 times the price in Japan.”
This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of March 21, 2025.
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