What fruit is so expensive in Japan?

Not an expert, but from what I saw: fancy peaches sold individually and melons. These are supposed to be good gifts to bring as a guest.

They're definitely exceptional cases, but in general tropical fruit (mangos, pineapples, even bananas) can be up to two or three times the price you might be used to paying in the US (or even Australia - not sure what it's like now but when I was in the US 15 years ago I remember bananas being especially cheap even in supermarkets - here you generally have to go to dedicated fruit/veg markets to get fresh produce cheaply).

Bananas are cheap in part because they are clones and incredibly predictable in terms of when they will ripen (therefore when to pick them, when to ship them, etc).

Yes but that doesn't explain why they would be substantially cheaper in US supermarkets vs Australian ones (after all, they're all grown here!), or why they're so much cheaper at dedicated produce markets. Apparently you can buy 8 bananas for $1.50 at a US Costco - not sure what Costco prices here are like (I do happen to live near one of the few stores in the country but have never been), but it wouldn't be unusual to pay almost $4 for that many at most supermarkets here, or around $2-3 (sometimes less) at a market, assuming 8 bananas weigh roughly 1kg. I can't find a reliable source for Japanese supermarket prices but my memory was something close to 400¥/kg a few years back, where that translated to ~$5 AUD. Mangoes could be 800¥ each, easily double or even triple the price they are here, and yes, watermelons (even the regular kind) are especially expensive, 1000+¥ for a smallish (~1kg) melon would be considered a bargain. Interestingly they're often grown locally (the super expensive square ones exclusively so), from what I can read, though I gather most are imported.

Bananas shouldn't be used as a baseline. USA supermarkets explicitly use them as a loss leader because they've discovered that nobody comes in to buy just bananas when they want bananas.

There is expensive designer fruit in Japan(I guess that’s a good way to describe it), but there is also regular fruit that is around the same price as in the US.

Regular fruit at a regular cheap grocery store in Tokyo is still 2-3x as expensive as the USA, even in relatively expensive US cities

You can get sushi that's actually good for 80% cheaper than the "California rolls with crap on them" you'll find in most of the USA, though, so it all evens out IMO

>Regular fruit at a regular cheap grocery store in Tokyo is still 2-3x as expensive as the USA, even in relatively expensive US cities

It's also 2-3x the quality and taste. Strawberries in the US have no taste at all; in Japan, they're amazing.

That's more a product of our tolerance for GMOed-to-hell bullshit. Fruit isn't what it used to be in the US-- it seems optimized for water retention these days. The standard watermelon here now tastes like a wet sponge. It didn't used to.

You can come close to Japanese fruit quality just buying organic in the US.

>You can come close to Japanese fruit quality just buying organic in the US.

Sure, and then the cost for American fruit looks very similar to that "expensive" Japanese fruit.

Dunno if you've been to a farm stand before but the prices are generally in line with grocery store prices for regular fruit.

They've got fake farm stands in Silicon Valley and Seattle, where sun-darkened Mexican dudes sell random cherries and stuff for even more than retail price

Pretty frustrating stuff, haha.

I'd been to actual farmer's markets out in the middle of nowhere, so I was really excited to see one coming into town. Got there and it was $3 for an ear of corn, $20 for a bag of cherries, etc

Strawberries in California are fucking delicious, even the half-rotten ones they sell at Target