Posted on 07/21/2023 10:39:33 PM PDT by algore
Around 1990 I spent two weeks in Japan on a business trip. The yen was 240 to the dollar making most things seem like a bargain. Fruit however was not. I remember the corner mini-mart near the hotel in Tokyo having melons for $100. One time in a small inexpensive restaurant I had a peach for dessert. It was $10 and it was amazing and well worth the price. That’d be around $25 today.
Yeah, there are $100 melons, typically greenhouse grown and often out of season. Everything is perfect about them. They are great for gifting or making an impression in a society where gifting is part of the culture and acquiring "stuff" isn't so much.
I read a similar story in a small rural town. A kid was caught vandalizing an elderly neighbor’s property. His father made him mow the neighbor’s lawn and clean up the property every Saturday morning for six months.
Hilarious
“Eatin’ green peach. ‘Spect to die any minute.”
Great Fitzgerald story, The Ice Palace, about a Georgia girl who tries New York City. That line comes at he end, after she goes back home.
That evaluation is like $2/peach. Maybe that is the retail price in Japan, but certainly not the wholesale price. I bought 1/2 bushel of peaches from a stand for $35, maybe 45c a peach.
You’re right, the yen dropped in 86. It must have been 85 or so when I was there.
There’s a story, maybe apocryphal, about a businessman in downtown Tokyo who set down his briefcase while waiting for the light to change at a busy crosswalk. He left it there by mistake. It was waiting there for him, right where he left it, the next day.
My dad told me about the one time he got busted. A bunch of his friends decided it would be fun on Halloween to dig up this rock in a guy’s front yard and move it. Turns out, only a small portion was visible above ground. They kept digging and digging, and eventually Officer Friendly and a paddy wagon arrived and hauled them all to the hoosegow. Hardened criminals, you see.
My wife loves that song and introduced me to it.
Most of the time, the yen bounced around between 110 and 125 per dollar, sometimes going 10 over and under, but rarely outside of that range.
The massive amount of business that Japan does with the USA tends to drag it back to the 110-125 reality range, though lately that range has shifter to 125-145, making it actually cheaper to live in Japan than the USA if you compare it with similar sized cities.
New York and Tokyo, Sapporo and Milwaukee, Columbus and Nagoya . . . something like that.
Fukushima peaches
PASS
Radiation safe cuz the guy says so.
How could this happen in Japan? They have very few Amish.
Glow in the dark nuclear veggies? Exactly where do the greenies stand on this?
It’s easy to steal peaches at night when they glow in the dark...
“Blow up your TV
Throw away your paper
Go to the country
Build you a home
Plant a little garden
Eat a lot of peaches
Try an’ find Jesus on your own”
-John Prine, Spanish Pipedream.
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