Fruit is viewed in Japan as a sort of dessert or snack This is exemplified in the way fruit is referred to as ‘mizu-gashi’ (watery sweets). People seldom think of fruit as part of their meals.

I’ve always found this a bit unusual.

The price of fruit in Japan is a luxury item. I will not look at the price once the item is packaged, The packaging look more expensive then the fruit. I enjoy an avocado but will not eat one in Japan due to the carbon foot print it has created. Like most fruit in Japan there is the burden and the guilt associate with the carbon footprint for that fruit item.

I just go to Costco and buy all my fruit and avocados there, can’t live with out it. A lot of my Japanese friends laugh at me for the amount of money I spend on fruit but I could care less because it’s a big part of my diet, more than 35%, if I want to snack then I will eat dried fruits.

IF you are lucky enough to live near a local farmer's market you can get good delicious fairly inexpensive fruit, but if you must go to the big chain supermarkets you will pay a fortune. I think the fixation with perfect looking fruit is a real problem here. If it has a blemish or a little discolored it is still as delicious as one that looks perfect.

It's always some "cultural" reason for things, rarely economic or political, for the explainers.

Or could it be the fact that fruit has been fetishised and swaddled in so much plastic that it looks like a Christmas doll or an Easter egg? Or news items that pop up every year celebrating cubic Yubari watermelons, or the price one piece of fruit reaches at auction? Or could it be that a single fruit is so expensive that people turn to other junk food to snack on? Or could it be that well-meaning school dieticians encourage the thinking that it's some kind of garnish, when they serve two or three grapes as dessert in school lunches, inadvertently making the children think fruit is like candy? Or could it be the total absence of messaging about the importance of eating fruit daily?

Japan really reaps what it sows in infantilising its population with this diet of media brain mush.

And to think they have persimmons and an amazing variety of citrus fruit just growing everywhere.

The fruit cartel keeps prices too high! Hundred dollars for a melon is robbery.

“Fruit is viewed in Japan as a sort of dessert or snack” … “People seldom think of fruit as part of their meals.“

I thought that dessert was part of a meal

We eat fruit every day but we don't buy the expensive ones.