On Friday, March 27, 2026, "KINESS Honda" officially opened in Shibata City. This shared office facility utilizes the former Honda Elementary School building and is the city's second school-based innovation hub, following "KINESS Tenno," which opened in October 2022. KINESS Honda will serve as a key location for supporting research, development, and startups, and will collaborate with the Nagaoka University of Technology (NUT) J-PEAKS Project as a site for demonstrating new innovations.

At this facility, NUT plans to establish the "High-Performance Mushroom Cultivation Business Consortium" in collaboration with Ivy System Inc. and National Institute of Technology (KOSEN), Kagoshima College. This project, which involves the demonstration cultivation of high-performance mushrooms, embodies the "Re-Startup" concept promoted by the J-PEAKS Project. During the opening ceremony, Professor Takashi Yamaguchi presented an overview of the initiative to approximately 80 attendees.

Following the ceremony, NUT students hosted several side events, including a demonstration of disaster-response robots and an electric mobility experience. Additionally, participants enjoyed a hands-on rice ball making and tasting event using rice grown in NUT’s COI-NEXT project research fields and stored in traditional "yukimuro" (snow-cooled cellars). The events were a great success, with over 50 local residents, including elementary and junior high school students, experiencing cutting-edge technology and research results firsthand.

NUT will continue to support the "Re-Startup" of companies based on core technologies and promote industrial advancement by leveraging regional characteristics, contributing to the revitalization and attractiveness of local communities.

Related information

Kines Honda:https://shibata-sharedoffice.jp/kiness-honda.php

Issued by

Head Office for Research Strategy, Nagaoka University of Technology (Saito, Takei)