(Some) Aberrant Food Prices In Japan

Factual Questions
1

Recently got back from Japan so if (as I sometimes do) I post a mini-batch of Japan questions, indulge me pls.

So I get that Japan is an island and doesn’t have the greatest farmland resources and has to import a lot of food. I get that the dollar exchange rate is currently ultra-punitive when you do the yen-dollar conversion and price things out in dollars. And I even get that certain foodstuffs are traditionally considered luxury goods/giftworthy in a way that they would not be here (for instance, various sorts of melons are considered a great hostes gift or omiyage (vacation souvenir gift) material). I get that. And I have seen melons or mangos or other exotic fruits in Japanese department stores for mind boggling prices, 10,000 yen IIRC correctly (that’s ~$120 at the moment). I put that down to the nice gift box and the department store premium (for the unaquainted, department stores are quite popular, carry a diverse range of products including tons of food, and are considered quite prestigious, for whatever reason).

But this last time – geez. I wandered into a regular supermarket in an anonymous part of central Tokyo. It turned out to be a more comprehensive full-supermarket flavor of the ubiquitous 7-11 empire. So, no real pretentions to luxury (other than that even regular 7-11s are much cleaner and have more and better food than in the U.S.). Clearly most of the shoppers were neighborhood housewives doing regular marketing.

And a single apple was 1,000 yen. A single cantaloupe 5,000. Single grapefruits and oranges, similar range. And this is minus the depato packaging (they were neatly wrapped in little nets or cellophane, but that’s about it).

Who in God’s name is buying these things, and why is that considered a viable price?

Before I say, check my first paragraph, all food’s expensive in Japan – well, no, not quite. I looked in the meat aisle (meat being notoriously resource expensive and hard to farm in Japan), and decent looking beef (Australian, I think) was, from an eyeball and trying to convert grams to ounces on the fly, about 40%-60% more than what I’d pay at Costco. Bad but then meat’s still a bit more of a garnish for Japanese so it wouldn’t ruin the budget. And other price points were surprisingly reasonable (again given the conversion rate especially) – I could, when I was feeling lazy and cheap and unwilling to brave a restaurant menu in Japanese, fill up on some pretty damn tasty convenience store snacks (think a few meat skewers, a rice ball with fish, a bit of sushi, and a bottle of tea) for less than $15. And friends took us to a yakitori place at which I literally could not begin to finish my nine-course set menu for 3,500 yen. Or, about 2/3 of that cantaloupe. So the ridiculous price premium seems only to apply to some products or in some contexts.

So what if your family really likes apples, or cantaloupes? You could spend 10% of your discretionary food budget on them. Which foods does the insane premium apply to and why? Who really pays those prices (my acquaintances are, like most Tokyoites I know, on very modest middle class salaries (almost all less than $100k equivalent I’d bet, which given real estate alone really is somewhat modest there))?

And – I strongly suspect the answer to this involves one or more forms of overt corruption and protectionism – why hasn’t some entrepreneur filled the huge price gap? I mean, apple orchards are one thing, but cantaloupes grow like weeds, I’d imagine even a tiny backyard garden strip or even window planter could put you into business as a green market entrepreneur. I’d quit my job and do it full time at $50+ per melon.

2

Those cantaloupes are probably meant for gifts-- not something you’d casually eat for breakfast. In Japanese society, there is often the need to give a gift that says “I spent a lot of money on this, and it may not be practical, but it looks marvelous!”.

3

Yea one gets the impression its subsidies and tarriffs
I once read a story on why bad beer-like product was so popular in japan, perverse result of 48% taxation on real beer.

4

The Japanese are obsessed with perfect fruit and willing to pay for it.

Makes me curious as to the waste factor.

5

That’s what I’ve heard. There’s a lot of government involvement in pricing. Some food products are artificially low priced due to government subsidies and others are artificially high priced due to tariffs. Other countries (including the United States) have the same policies, it’s just more extreme and therefore more noticable in Japan.

6

I never really think of fruit as that popular in Japanese cuisine. Is there that much demand, among the native culture?

7

Japanese cuisine as such doesn’t really do dessert or sweets, other than red-bean type sweets, so the sweet tooth has to be filled with something else, which generally comes down to fruit or candy (you wouldn’t think of chocolate as part of Japanese cuisine but any convenience or grocery store will have a profusion of candy and chocolate). And as mentioned, gourmet fruit is considered right up there with nice chocolate or booze as a high-end gift on the fairly numerous occasions that require/are nice for gifts (I came back with some gourmet rice crackers (?), a lacquered box, and a wooden puzzle box, all random “I have a little something for you, it’s not much” presents from friends and business colleagues). And I get that – but I was in a neighborhood shop one notch above a convenience store – I didn’t think there’d be that much high-end gift shopping there . . . .

8

Indeed. Little known trivia, the character that Ken Watanabe was based off in The Last Samurai, his dying words were not “perfect…blossom,” but actually “perfect…melons.”

9

those prices were an aberration, individually packaged in 7/11 which is not a real supermarket. I buy 4 Apples for 400 yen at the local Tamade or Life supermarket in Osaka. I don’t know how much Cantaloupes are but Avacados are 100-130 yen each and 4 Banana’s are 300 yen.

There’s plenty of affordable food in Japan if you know where to look.

10

It must have been a special melon (was it from Yubari?). But I should also say that, when grape season comes, do spend the $10 dollars or so on a box of Pione grapes. You can thank me later.

11

Apples are expensive, but not usually 1000 yen each. I bought six Fuji apples for 500 yen yesterday at a market at the shrine. The price of red apples at our local supermarket is around 165 each and they are 150 each at a smaller fruit-and-veg shop across the way. And yes, they are all super-perfect looking and individually wrapped in little foam nets.

The fact is, as you acknowledged, some food in Japan is extremely reasonable. If you eat Japanese-style, good rice, fish, instant miso, pickles, it’s not expensive. But if you want to eat the same stuff you eat at home (and sometimes I do, so I’m not judging), it can be painfully expensive.

12

And cherries. I had some cherries at my MIL’s in Akita when they were in season and I’ll never forget them as long as I live.

13

Here’s a BBC article on this very issue

14

Apparently the price for fresh fish is even more absurd. My sister told me of her visit to a Japanese fish auction in which a fresh caught tuna went for over $10,000.

15

It’s a sled!

16

Yes, but it in fairness it was caught by a mermaid with a butterfly net.

17

Tuna have been sold for over $100,000 in Tsukiji fish market. But this is reflective of the restaurant value of bluefin tuna sashimi, not fresh fish sold in the supermarket for preparation at home, which in general is fairly inexpensive.

18

During my time there I was initially shocked at how expensive fruit was, but came to understand why. As some have mentioned, the most expensive fruit tends to be used as gifts. From what my teachers told me, fruit is seen as a dessert there- you eat a slice of orange with your lunch, not the whole thing.
As the OP mentioned, the price of shipping and importing does not help the matter any.
I will say that as a midwesterner, Japan had the best fruit markets ever. Everything was ripe and perfect unlike now where I have to sift through the bins at Kroger for the closest-to-ripe apple or peach. I think that there is so little space in the stores and fruit markets, that they only have enough room to put out the ripe products to be sold immediately, and restocked the next day. None of the digging I have to do around here in large bins…I miss the quality over quantity.

19

That’s a huge factor.

Owing to the traditional view of fruit as a delicacy and a dish in itself, and a the perfect gift, Japanese farmers aim for fruit that are big, look great, and taste awesome. On the other hand, in North America, fruit is seen as a commodity and farmers tend to go for fruit that looks okay, transports well and is cheap.

In Japan, a farmer will inspect his vineyard every day, looking not just at each bunch, but each grape, culling the smaller ones so that the nutrients go to the healthier ones. The bunches are covered in paper bags to protect them. They are carefully picked by hand, inspected and sorted. Because they are fragile, the bunches are individually packed before they are shipped. You can see how all this pampering affects prices. Add to this the cost of real estate and the farmers’ cost of living, and it’s actually surprising you can buy a bunch of grapes for less than $10.

Fruit and meat are not quite commodities: there are many different brands and grades available. You can buy a Yubari Musk Melon that is perfect in every way, down to the net pattern on its skin and the shape of its stem (not to mention its flavour, of course) for well over $100. You can also buy melons for less than $5. The same supermarket will have Matsuzaka Beef steaks for $50 next to Aussie Beef steaks that cost $6.

Where tariffs have a huge effect is rice. Tariffs on fruit are not particularly heavy (0 to 25% or so, 5-10% typically), at least not enough to explain the price difference. For this, you have to look at the demand for quality from the market. Even for imports, consumers will demand products that are close to what they expect. This means packs of strawberries that are all the same size, and melons that lack major blemishes, not to mention of course, that they need to taste great.

We’re a family of four and we eat fruit every day without sinking our budget. We eat less but better than we would in North America, but I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. If you chose the local produce that are in season, or the current cheap imports (currently that’s Thai mangoes, yes!), you can get by just fine.

20

I’m yearning for a relaxation of the anti-FTFY rule.