What’s at your fruit stand?

Yaoyas may be one of Japan’s greatest secrets. There is much made over the freshness of the fish and seafood or the beauty and simplicity in handmade soba noodles. Yaoyas, though, never seem to be mentioned. Yaoyas are small fresh fruit and vegetable markets. I suppose its their lack of size or glamor that leads them to be so easily overlooked. They tend to do a twin business. On one hand providing fresh produce to local restaurants. On the other hand, selling the best, freshest and ripest of produce at a far lower price than the grocery stores to anyone that will wander in.

This is not your local farmer’s market. This is Tokyo. Sure there are folks who drag fresh produce in, piled high in bundles, on the morning trains. There is an older woman who does this and lays out her offerings three days a week just outside a local train station. And there was a lady who would stroll through our old neighborhood once a week selling freshly picked produce.

But the yaoyas have everything. Most importantly they have whatever fruit is the freshest. In addition to having fruit that you would consume at home, they also have premium fruit that you purchase to give as gifts. And when I say premium, I mean highly priced. Really highly priced. It is not at all uncommon to find melons that start at the equivalent of twenty-five or thirty dollars. I have seen watermelons in specialty shops priced in the low hundreds. I like fresh fruit. But I don’t like anyone enough to spend that kind of money to buy them some fruit.

Given the frequency with which I see these, I have become somewhat conditioned by them. And so I wasn’t completely surprised to read in the Japan Times this morning that someone paid ¥650,000 (US$ 6,500) for a black watermelon grown in Hokkaido (the northern most island in Japan, where much of our produce and milk comes from). Here’s the good news: If you are feeling left out or disappointed that you didn’t even know you could bid on a black watermelon from Hokkaido, not to worry. The purchaser said he will be selling it online in an auction.

Happy bidding! Let me know how it taste.