PEAR-FECT produce
Hushed reverence, fruit displayed like jewellery and whitegloved sales staff: you can bust your budget on fruit at specialist Japanese fruit stores, writes Brian Johnston.
The Japanese melon season was particularly good this year. A pair of melons from Yubari in Hokkaido sold at auction in May for 3.5 million yen (NZ$38,200).
The record for a melon is five million yen, which makes Yubari melons, with their bright orange flesh and glossy green skin, the world’s most expensive fruit.
The Japanese spend big on fruit. Flush with cash? You could enjoy a single grape worth NZ$550 – slightly better value than you might think, given such grapes are the size of a ping-pong ball.
That record was set by a bunch of Ruby Roman grapes that sold for 1.5 million (NZ$16,370) yen in 2022.
Ruby Romans are grown in Ishikawa prefecture by a handful of farmers under strict regulations about the grapes’ weight, sugar content and colour.
Such extravagance is usually corporate and attracts press coverage.
Still, you can bust your budget on fruit at a more modest – but still outrageous – price in specialist Japanese fruit stores.
You’ll find one of them, Takano Fruit Parlour, at Shinjuku train station in Tokyo. This select fruit chain opened its first store here in 1885.
Among the treats are reddish-purple Miyazaki mangoes for $300 and Sekai-Ichi apples at $40 a pop. Too much? Try a single $10 cherry or a $7 strawberry.
The strawberry tastes … well, like a strawberry, although perfectly ripe and juicy and so sweet it almost seems artificial.
Upstairs in Takano, I find two boxed melons at 46,440 yen (NZ$507) and another single one for 32,400 yen. They sit spot-lit behind glass, like museum artefacts.
The presentation of the fruit is marvellous. The shop itself looks like a high-end jewellery store: marble floors, wooden shelves, mood lighting, impeccably dressed staff.
Each piece of fruit is individually wrapped and carefully padded, then presented in a wooden box lined with yellow silk or in a basket lined with pink tissue paper and encased in stiff cellophane.
I could buy six different fruits tied with ribbon and separated in a box by dividers like truffles – except if I did, I’d have no money left for my hotel bill.
All the fruit is perfectly shaped, perfumed, plump, blemish-free and picked at the optimal moment.
Usually, such treasures are grown in greenhouses on plants trimmed so that only one fruit grows on a single branch, to absorb maximum nutrients.
Harder-skinned fruits like melons are carefully massaged, which is said to promote sweetness.
The Japanese have a liking for unusuallooking fruit, such as square or heartshaped melons, Buddha-shaped pears (formed using moulds), or the odd-looking White Jewel strawberry, which is white with bright red seeds.
Like French wine, expensive fruit is labelled with a protected geographic indicator.
In Takano’s, information labels tell you where the fruit is from, who has grown it and, like wine labels, describe the flavour.
The Japanese revere fruit. It’s more likely eaten after an elegant kaiseki meal than as a snack.
Fruit is offered on Buddhist and Shinto altars and is a symbol of respect given as a prestigious gift.
Takano’s certainly takes its fruit very seriously.
The Japanese attend workshops here to learn how to cut fruit like sashimi; the knife work affects texture and flavour.
Well-dressed ladies come for fruit cakes and desserts put together by female-only chefs in white. If the season is right, try a mango parfait.
It costs a mere $21, and the thinly sliced mango is folded like a work of art – not record-breaking art, but still a chic experience.