News of Hokitika’s Wildfood Festival and its gourmet bush tucker has produced an unusual request from a Japanese game
show.
Festival organiser Mike Keenan said Ainori, a Japanese game show has asked for fifty live huhu grubs from the festival
to be couriered to Rotorua where they will be used in a cooking show that will broadcast into 12 million Japanese homes.
An incredulous Keenan said the cooking show featured four males and three females who “drove round in a pink van finding
love through different experiences”.
The live huhu grubs destined to become television stars of the east will be chocolate coated. Keenan said the mind
boggled as to how the huhu grubs were going to be used by the Japanese game show couples and said there has been no
reaction as yet from animal rights groups.
Japan is not the only country that has taken an interest in Hokitika’s 13th Wildfoods Festival. American network CBS
will be showing footage of the festival later this month and Ten Network from Australia is sending a presenter to cover
the event for their programme ‘Tell Us Where To Go’.
Over a million readers read about last year’s festival in The New York Times and locally the festival will feature in
Cushla Marney’s book ‘Quirky and Different Events in New Zealand’.
Newstalk ZB will cover the event live on Saturday, both television channels will be filming and food magazines such as
Cuisine will be attending.
Air New Zealand is now putting on a special day trip flights to Hokitika to help meet demand.
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