Fruit in Japan is expensive, though not quite as obscenely so as most foreign folks believe. Still, many Japanese people do not routinely eat fruit except for bananas because it's on the dear side and that makes it hard to include as part of their regular diet. Fruit is often a treasured gift, unless it is persimmons that are harvested by the truckload and freely dispensed when in season. Because of the high price of fruit, one can get pretty excited at the prospect of scoring some for a low price as seems possible in the fruit cart pictured above. Large white peaches are usually 100 yen ($1.25) apiece or more. This cart seems to be offering them at the bargain price of 5 peaches for a mere 300 yen. The thing is that this is a bait and switch situation. When you walk up to the cart and try to buy them, they'll tell you that some anemic runts of the litter that are hidden out of easy view are what you can get for the low price (worms and bruises thrown in for free). The prize beauties on top are about 150-200 yen each.
It's possible that some of these carts are selling what they seem to sell, but in my experience, they are always trying to pull a fast one and I won't miss this sort of shady dealing.
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