By James Jeffrey Japan Times February 3, 2015 Aromatic: Naomi Nakahira, of Ueshima Coffee Co., evaluates coffees produced from Belete-Gera Forest coffee beans. | JAMES JEFFREY JIMMA, ETHIOPIA – On a typically sunny January day in southwestern Ethiopia, smallholder coffee farmers gather beneath red, blue and orange canvases, propped up by wooden stakes, to watch and participate in a coffee-tasting competition with demanding Japanese standards. Naomi Nakahira, a coffee adviser with Ueshima Coffee Co. (UCC), one of Japan’s biggest coffee companies, smells and slurps his way, along with three internationally qualified Ethiopian cuppers, through a selection of the farmers’ natural forest coffees, marking them for aroma, taste and the like. The majority score 80 or above out of 100 — enough to be classified as specialty coffee. This February, commuters on the Tokaido Shinkansen, running between Osaka and Tokyo, can pass their own judgment on the p...