No Ordinary Cherry

There are two kinds of fruit in Japan. You have your regular, market variety fruit, and then there are the fruit you would never buy for your self but for those you love very, very much or to whom you very, very much wish to suck up. One can recognize the latter type of fruit because they will be packaged, often in ways that are not quite normal. Take the above cherries: single layer, probably individually hand inspected, militantly lined up five by eight, and costing 9,800 yen. Oh yeah, that's the other way to spot a "not for one's own consumption" fruit: the price. If you see an Okinawan mango or a melon with its t-bar-like stem still attached, run. Alright, that would be an overreaction. But I wouldn't buy one. I could be dead wrong, but I have a very hard time believing a melon that costs 25,000 yen would taste that much better than its humble 1,000-yen cousin. I can attest however that a mango from Okinawa has the potential to taste awfully good--brilliantly sweet, juicy, and smooth as butter, not a fiber in sight--but usually about 6,500 yen.

Regardless, if anyone gives you a present of fruit in Japan, you better get down on your knees and start doing a bit of toe kissing. If you're an insanely nice person or truly want to show your appreciation, the best thing you can do is to cut open that fruit and offer to share. Being Japan, there's a very good chance the fruit giver will protest and back away, in which case, you send them off with an over-profuse farewell (walk them outside, then stand on the road and keep shouting high-pitched thank-yous and waving frantically until they are completely out of sight--a speck on the horizon does not count); hurry back inside; do a happy dance around and around the precious box, because its contents will taste very good; and ever-so-slowly savor each bite--but not too slowly because there's nothing more painful to behold than rotten gift fruit.