The Price of Friendship

-About $105.00 American Dollar-

When my friends and I first saw the glass cabinet filled with fruit we thought it was strange. Then we looked at the prices and became thoroughly amused.

Some fruit over here is very expensive. In an area nearby a melon cost at the same store, a melon cost around 3,000 yen, or about 30 American dollars. Similar prices can be found at nearby stores.

The price for gift fruit on the other hand, is a bit more:

-Gift Melons: $(25)2.00; $157.50; $315.00 00 respectively-

Gift melon may be the most commonly seen, but all fruits can become exquisite gift fruits. Gift fruits are specially grown, and taken care of. For instance “Growers trim the vines so that only three melons will grow on each tree. When the baby melons grow to the size of a human fist, two are chopped off to allow the most promising one to monopolize all the nourishment from the vine. That one melon is expected to mature into the juicy, beautiful and revered $100 dollar fruit” (An article copied here[scroll down to third comment]).

Of course, fruit is still fruit. Stores have managed to make a form of ‘brand-name’ fruit with the extravagant prices. These gift fruits are generally not bought to be eaten by the buyer, but to be given as a gift. A gift’s appropriateness is based on price, as demonstrated on this article. There is a certain range the gift should be in for certain situations, as seen in this article.

There have been several occurrences with Barrack Obama giving ‘strange gifts’ in England to other higher-ups, and can be used demonstrate, on a less-international level (hopefully?), how awkward it would be to give the wrong price/status gift. How much you spend does send a message, even if it’s just on a melon.

The Murder of Colonel Sanders

-A Happy Man, or the Next Victim?-

Sports traditions are common. Considering how much I pay attention to sports, this is about all I can say about them. Strange stories do catch my attention however, and there is definitely one surrounding the Hanshin Tigers.


It all started after the 1985 Japan Series. Apparently, there is a tradition, or perhaps an attempted tradition, of Japanese baseball fans jumping into rivers after big victories if they look like a specific player. I assume there is another tradition of everyone getting a tetanus shot after said tradition, but I could be wrong. But Randy Bass was, and probably still is, a foreigner. No one quite matched his smashing appearance besides the one and only Colonel Sanders.

Outside every KFC in Japan, there is a Colonel Sanders statue greeting everyone with a cheeky smile. To rabidly excited baseball fans, he became the embodiment of all foreigners, and joined the fans that had jumped into the river. He, however, drowned.

The statue corpus was discovered on March 10th this year after floating in down the river for 24 years. He was in pretty good shape, only missing one hand and suffering from severe erosion. He is said to have no comment on the incident.


Finding the statue is said to have lifted a bad playing streak off the Hanshin Tigers that has lasted since the 1985 incident. The Hanshin Tigers have not yet had an opportunity to play in the Japan Series yet, considering it is hosted in the fall. Optimism may be the key to success; this will be tested later.

-My Fiancé Doesn't Know I Won't See Him Again-

Gendered Speech

-Dear Daniel, Boy-

-Hello Kitty, Girls-

The above photo’s show three characters: two feminine Hello Kitties, and the masculine Dear Daniel. But how can you tell which is supposed to be the ‘girl’ and the ‘boy’? After all, one picture is simply a package of a snack, and the other a stuffed animal; they don’t have a specific sex, but you can still tell what they portray. You certainly don’t know the sexes of the cows in the background of the snack package, and probably don’t care. They’re just cows. But the kitties are specifically marked with gender signals, so you do know. Now pretend you couldn’t see the kitties. If the cats started meowing, do you think you could tell what sex they were just by listening to them?

In the Japanese language, gender is easily distinguishable not only by visual cues, but by different forms of speaking. This goes beyond word use, and into tone, pronunciation, and other subtle forms in speech. An easily understandable example, even for people who don’t speak the language, can be noticed in the pronouns individuals are allowed to use, as seen at this link.

Personal particles are not where the only differences lie. The ending of sentences can also be different, which directs assertion and/or requests. The feminine forms tend to show more hesitation and are much more polite than the masculine forms. Subsequently, students studying Japanese language are taught very feminine language, so that they sound more polite even if they stumble through the language. I, as a Japanese minor, was not aware of this until I took a Gender in Japan class, and I think it's important for anyone interested in Japanese language to look into.

A broad summary of gendered language and culture can be read here.