230 Soba Street Promotion Committee: advert-body-1 by J. Walter Thompson Japan

About 0.03% of people are allergic to the buckwheat noodle, and it is one of the most common allergies among Japanese schoolchildren.

While people in Japan, where soba is popular, are aware of this, foreign tourists are not.

The group, known as the 230 Soba Street Promotion Committee, recruited J. Walter Thompson Japan to develop the Soba Allergy Tattoo Checker – a sticker decorated with a Japanese tattoo motif - in cooperation with Dr. Mami Nomura, a dermatologist.

To check if you are allergic, apply soba-yu – the water that soba noodles have been simmered in – to the sticker and attach with the wet side to your skin. If you are allergic, your skin will turn red and the color will be visible through the clear plastic sections of the tattoo motif.