By Nicholas Ward

If you are travelling to Japan and staying with locals at any point you may consider dropping by

Sembikiya Fruit Emporium in Tokyo’s Nihonbashi district to pick up a $10’000 Yubari Melon, or if that’s out of you price range a $20 apple.

I first learned of the Japanese tradition of ‘gift fruit’ while wandering about a train station waiting for my departure. I had grabbed a station bento boxes for lunch and decided I would grab a cup of tea and maybe some fruit.

As I sipped my excellent green tea. Japan is one of the only countries in the world where a cup of tea in a train station taste like tea instead of vaguely earthy hot water. And as I sipped my surprisingly excellent green tea my eyes fell on a box of strawberries for 5000 yen. My eyes passed over them and I looked at some chocolates and stopped. My eyes flicked back.

They were a box of pale white strawberries. So white they looked bleached. Individually wrapped and placed in a high-quality display box. There were eight of them. Spaced out. The price was still 5000 yen or about USD 50.

Even stranger there was another big box of strawberries for 1000 yen next to it. They were large, bright red and looked quite good.

The most famous of Japans prized fruit is the Yubari melon which in 2018 sold for a record $30’000 for two prize specimens.

Japan has many traditions that outsiders find odd to say the least. One of the more surprising one and least expected is the tradition of gifting expensive fruit. At weddings, business meetings, or to friends, like a bottle of good wine or champagne, overpriced fruit is the gift of choice for many in Japan.

The most famous fruit parlour in Japan is Sembikiya in Nihonbashi, Tokyo. It was established in 1834 and opened the first fruit café in Japan in 1868 as the country began to open too trade with Europe.

Established on a trading river Sembikiya was able to transport goods over a great distance and his shop sold many fruits that had been near impossible to get in cities prior. Making it popular with the rich and powerful.

As Japan opened to global trade routes it began its own form of the Columbian exchange, which refers to the period that tomatoes, chocolate, corn, chili and a variety of other goods were brought to Europe from the New World creating a cultural boom.

In Japan markets which had sold only Japanese and some Chinese goods were suddenly overflowing with incredible new products, tobacco, sugar, fruits, and more. As the supply increased so too did the demand.

Fruit long a luxury item became not only a symbol of wealth but a symbol of the new order of Japan.

This isn’t as unusual as it seems today, during the Conquest of the America’s it became customary to gift your wife a pineapple on return from the New World. People would buy and sell pineapples, parade them around town, wear them in clothing, even reportedly put them in their windows to warn off any suitors or lovers that their husbands had returned from the new world.

Similarly, tulips would create one of the great economic booms and busts in the Netherlands. As people went mad for the middle eastern flower.

Gift fruit is also popular in china. Though not to the same extent or price. During the cultural revolution a case of mangoes was gifted to Mao by Pakistan. Mao sent one mango to each of the top performing factories around the country. Some factories boiled the mangoes and made a broth for their workers while others pickled them and built shrines for them.

Even today much of the world places great value on caviar, and saffron. When in certain parts of the world they are common place.

Japan is an island nation covered from north to south with dense uninhabitable mountains. It is a nation without a great deal of arable land. Much like in Europe during the conquest of the America’s certain fruits became status symbols in Japan. Fruits from far away, rare fruits, even particularly beautiful fruits.

Where most of the world moved away from this tradition of overvaluing fruit the Japanese have not. And pristine and rare fruit are still carefully selected, presented and sold at exorbitant prices all over Japan.

So, if you want to impress your Japanese host consider fruit.