Fruit in Japan - what’s going on?

I recently acquired a taste for fruit, which I don't usually eat much of. So, yesterday I set off for a fruit buying session...

Approximate prices:

Melon: 600 yen a skimpy wedge

Grapes: 9-1250 @250gr!!! And one store ONLY had the 1250 ones, tastefully displayed as if in an art museum exhibit (or a jeweler store!)

Apple: 2-250 yen for ONE

Surely in summer these ridiculous rip-off prices should not be acceptable, so what is going on?

What kind of stores in what kind of neighborhood did you look? In my neighborhood, melon costs 350 yen (for a small but whole melon - honeydew type, not the high-end one, but tastes really good), and grapes are at most half that price.

Joe,

You've answered your own question yourself. You "recently" acquired a taste for fruit, so you never realized this has been "going on" for ages.

Fruit in Japan is often used as precious gifts. Farmers work hard to grow them perfectly, and the retailers display them neatly to suit (?) the price.

That said, as suggested, I wonder what stores you looked into. You can't expect Takano or Kinokuniya to sell cheap fruit. Go to the middle-class residential areas and look for the most low-key fruit shops or supermarket.

You can find small packs of melon cubes and whole peaches for reasonable prices. My neighborhood store sells grapes for 398yen a bunch or bananas for 138 yen a bunch.

By the way, apples aren't in season.

You must have gone to a fruit specialty shop.

Those places specialize in visually flawless "name-brand" fruit that's mostly for gift-giving, and not personal consumption.
A melon can easily go for 5000-10000 yen and kyoho grapes will cost 2500 for a fist-sized bunch.
These fruit are so expensive because the growers use a style of pruning that sacrifices the majority of what would be a normal crop to concentrate the flow of nutrients into a select number of buds.
As such, their crop might be 1/10 or 1/20 the size for a normal grower on the same amount of land.
It's all hand-grown, hand-picked, and the fruit are not picked until the are considered "perfect" for shipment.

In general, fruit in Japan is insanely expensive compared to the USA for example but reasonably priced fruit can be found in most supermarkets and especially large-scale places like Aeon.

Ask some of your friends where to buy fruit, and all other products for that matter!

Did you know apples are out of season now?