John Daub: Have you ever eaten something so good
that you've instantly fallen in love with it?
Japan's Yubari King melons
are certainly in that category.
Top grade luxury melons fetching as
much as 200 dollars at Tokyo supermarkets.
And at auction?
As much as a new car.
So here we are in Hokkaido.
This is the Yubari melon auction.
In 2019, a pair of melons sold
for almost 50 thousand dollars.
In this episode we'll take you to the
excitement of the auction here but also
to the farm fields in Yubari to
understand what makes these
melons so valuable.
This is the Yubari King melon
auction story: Japanese luxury fruit
farm to table.
Irrashaimase! (Welcome!)
Peter von Gomm: ONLY in JAPAN
John: The annual Yubari King melon auction is
about to take place in Sapporo.
I'm pretty excited to see how much
these are going to be going for.
The largest pair of Yubari's
excellent class melons this year.
The first auction of the year
usually takes place at the end of May
depending on the harvest.
This year's top melons will fetch more
than last year's for sure.
The anticipation and excitement building here.
But why would anyone pay so much
for a pair of cantaloupe melons?
To learn the true value we need to start
at the farms in Yubari.
Hokkaido
Not far from Sapporo sits a town
surrounded by hills.
This is Yubari.
Early April the snow is still melting in Hokkaido.
Very little green.
Spring is several weeks away.
These vinyl green houses are where
the melons grow.
This is Kobayashi-san and he's going to
show us around his Yubari melon farm
during the first 50 days.
It takes 100 days to grow a full melon.
The melon vines have plenty of space to spread out
roughly one to three meters
in length over time.
This is the early stage during pollination.
Looking down you see yellow flowers.
And bees. Lots of bees.
Without the bees pollinating the
melon flowers there'd be no melons.
They're moved from vinyl greenhouse
to greenhouses as part of
the pollination process.
And, oh yeah, they make
really great honey too.
After pollination the bulb under
the flower will start to grow.
This will become the melon.
Smaller melons will be trimmed away
to encourage better quality fruit growth.
This baby melon bulb looks like
a hairy cucumber.
In a couple of months, it'll be that
beautiful melon that we all know.
These are the seeds the farmers use to
grow the Yubari King melons.
They're pretty valuable, locked up at the co-op.
But there are many factors like weather,
water, and soil that play a huge role in
adding value to the final taste.
Farmers start preparing and setting up
the greenhouses in March when the
melting snows allow it.
I was surprised that
these houses had moving parts.
They can open up allowing air in to
cool off the houses.
Kobayashi: Would you call this double-handle?
[Both laugh]
John: Here's a melon plant after being grafted.
Simply put leaves were sliced off and
fused with a clamp to a new rootstock.
This produces much better melons.
This greenhouse we're entering
finished planting a few weeks earlier.
We've seen the vine growth, flowering, and
pollination in the first 50 days.
These greenhouses are going to make some
delicious and profitable king melons
by early summer.
We'll be back at the end of May for the
harvest just before the world famous
melon auction.
Spring hits Hokkaido late, around early May.
The town is incredibly green.
Even with those vinyl greenhouses
which seem to be just about everywhere
in this part of town.
So this is Goto-san's melon farm.
Right now they're doing the first melon
harvest of the year.
Let's go take a look
inside the greenhouse.
You can see just how much they've grown.
These seedlings creating a melon patch
the length of the greenhouse.
Underneath the foliage on the ground are
melons sitting on white trays waiting to
be harvested.
You can tell they're ready by the size and color.
On this day JA Yubari,
the co-op, is hosting a media event to
celebrate the first harvest before the auction.
Yubari melons are a big deal.
The national press has come to cover the story.
Goto-san answers the usual
questions on what makes a Yubari King
melon so incredibly special.
One of the jewels of Hokkaido in Japan's
incredible fruit industry.
This day is a real family affair with
Goto-san's family helping to pick the
ceremonial melons.
His son and daughter are helping out a lot.
Perhaps taking the family mantle of
Yubari King melon producer when they grow up.
The stems of the melon are left on at
harvest because it improves the
aesthetics of the melon.
He's been following the progress of the
melons for about a hundred days and
knows which melons are ready based on
size, shape, and color.
This cart is getting pretty full.
I'm not sure if his son will be able
to get it to the sorting area.
He'll certainly need some help from his sister.
They take some questions from
the national press.
Reporter: Do you want melons to be eaten around the world?
Goto-san's children: We want people to eat daddy's melons.
John: Goto-san picks a few more before
the ceremony ends.
These go to the sorting area where
they're cleaned, weighed, and put into
boxes to the co-op.
Most farms here are family operations
hiring in season to help with the volume.
You can see there are a lot of melons on this day.
The quality and ranking of the
melons will be decided by the co-op but
producers have a good idea of how their
annual crop yields.
You can see there are a lot of different sizes.
Whether it's four, five, or six, or more,
the boxes should hold about
eight kilograms.
The harvest goes on from about May 20th
to the middle of August.
So to get the best Yubari King melons
you have to put in a lot of work and
hope for some luck.
Goto-san explains about how he judges
the melons for harvest.
Goto: When harvesting the melons
we first look at the top of melons.
When harvesting the melons
they start to change and look different as they grow.
Then, before picking, we look at the bottom of melons and
decide when to pick them by color.
They turn yellow gradually around that time.
We know the right timing by color.
John: So how do you eat a luxurious
Yubari King melon?
You first have to know when it's ripe enough.
You can't eat them right away.
After harvest their green gray colored
and ripen over time turning yellow like this.
By the fifth or sixth day when it
smells so sweet, the scent filling
the room, it's ready to eat.
Cut it in two, remove the seeds and chill.
Goto: You can see they gradually turned yellow.
John: Mrs. Goto shows us how to cut
and prepare a Yubari King melon.
She cuts off the stem and then
slices it in half from top to bottom.
A beautiful orange.
Mrs. Goto: Take the seeds out with a spoon.
John: Remove the seeds carefully.
Mrs. Goto: The seeds come out easily.
It's sure to be sweet and delicious.
Don't take too much of the melon.
John: Then she slices them into four even pieces.
Mrs. Goto: Would you like to eat it like this?
John: Sure, I can eat it just like this.
Mrs. Goto: I'll cut these more beautifully.
From the box, when ripe it has the best smell.
John: You really can't smell the sweetness
through the rind well until a few days
after harvest.
It's really different.
The scent of a ripe Yubari melon
is real paradise.
I don't want to cut this up.
Just want to smell it all day.
I'd be happy just taking this home
and smelling it all day.
The first bite? It is so sweet, not sugary sweet,
but a natural sweetness and aroma that makes
the senses dance.
Oishi! (Delicious!)
It's so juicy.
You won't know what it's like
for sure until you actually eat one.
It's fun to eat it like a watermelon
even if they do cost as much as 200 dollars.
It's still fruit although a perfect
piece of fruit.
I guess this is something that has such
amazing value here.
It's something you would give as a gift.
You'd give out of appreciation.
To really say thank you to somebody.
That's why a piece of fruit like this
is a wonderful gift here in Japan and
maybe even anywhere around the world.
I would like to eat this every day,
I'll be honest with you.
But it's just not something that
that you can afford to do, so it becomes
a very special meal.
Something maybe you would
eat once or twice a year, if that.
And I think
there's a great appreciation when you do
eat something that has so much flavor
like these melons here.
It's just something that's very to me this is
like really special.
But why do Japanese pay so much for these?
There's a gift-giving season in
Japan showing appreciation to somebody
and giving a luxury fruit as a gift,
a high-graded one, is a great present.
And don't forget that the farmers work pretty hard.
Almost like a chef making a perfect dish,
these mountains are so
perfect as-is.
Goto: We have 4 quality ranks:
"Good" requires a Brix level of 10 percent.
"Very Good" requires a Brix level of 11 percent.
We bring our melons to JA co-op before they are ripe.
They do quality checks on them for us.
John: The goal is to grow two stems from each
seedling and let them have six baby melons.
Then the farmer will choose the
most promising one or two of them and
cut the other four or five away.
They're looking for the best shape and size.
This means seventy to eighty percent of
the baby melons are cut away.
And in this greenhouse Goto-san said
there are 150 in here for harvest.
So wait are Yubari melons... melons?
Sort of.
Here are some facts.
Yubari King melons were born and branded in
1951 from two cantaloupe cultivars:
Earl's Favourite imported from the UK
during the Taisho era,
and Burpee's Spicy cantaloupe.
Cantaloupe melons also ripen
after harvesting.
Melons typically do not.
They just get softer.
Yubari King melons are grown on the ground, not hung.
White trays under them to help protect
and shape them as they get heavier.
This year 98 local farmers plan to ship a
total of 3,438 tons of melon valued
around 2.03 billion yen.
The Yubari King melons are harvested annually between
the end of May to the middle of August.
If you miss the season you'll have to
wait until next year for one.
Yubari King melons are protected by the
Japanese Geographical Indication like
Japanese wagyu beef.
You can find Yubari King melons
for as low as forty dollars
in Tokyo for good quality, but the higher
Brix sugar count and size of excellent
quality can increase prices to as much
as 200 dollars for a pair.
The top outstanding rank
melon accounts for only 0.2 percent
of the harvest, thus the higher price.
It's larger and sweeter.
The Yubari melon auction has sold the most expensive
melon in the world and we're about to go
there right now.
It's the first auction day for this
year's Yubari King melon crop and
boxes of excellent ranked melons in
wood boxes are ready to be bid on.
2,721 Yubari King melons in total will be auctioned.
Historically we can see melon
prices have mostly risen, with some dips
in financially weak years like after the
financial crisis of 2008.
Reaching a high of 5 million yen or 46,500 dollars in 2019
just before the Covid outbreak in 2020 which
saw the prices dip to a 40-year low.
Will the price increase again off of the
2.7 million yen winning bid from last year?
This year's auction drew a smaller media
presence due to the pandemic,
but expectations were high.
The Yubari King melon reputation is world renowned
these days and what happens here will be
covered around the world in the media.
The mayor of Yubari came with the
officials from JA Yubari, the local co-op,
which inspects and verifies all the melons.
The bell starts the auction.
The excellent "shu" ranked melon in the
front is the one we're all waiting for.
The auctioneer takes a bid speaking in a
language unknown to everyone in the room
except the bidders who bid with
hand gestures.
When the top melon was finally auctioned
off there was no recognition by the
media in the room.
No shock or hush from the crowd.
It just came and went and the
total was written on the white board to
announce it.
3 million yen or about 26,500 dollars.
You can buy a new car with that.
So why do people bid so much for these
special melons?
The winning bid this year came from Hokuyupack,
a Yubari-based company that
sells and packs fruits and vegetables.
Every media outlet from all over the
country was here to find out why he bid
so much, including yours truly, ONLY in JAPAN.
Kiyomichi Noda, the company president, was
nice enough to explain why he bid so much.
Noda: The weather was exceptionally good this year.
So the melons this year are the best of the best.
I really would like everybody to try them
and that's why I bought them.
I plan to serve them free of charge next week.
John: The super high price paid is not
just to get media attention although
the whole world is watching these days.
How much it'll go for?
It's really a gift to the melon farmers
thanking them for their hard work.
That high price energizing them
throughout the year to keep producing
the best of the best.
This high respect for the farmers is one reason why
Japanese fruits and vegetables are some
of the best in the world and the prices
for premium produce really reflects
that respect.
The melons were wrapped up carefully and
transported back to Yubari
to the Melon Dome for display.
These melons will be eaten in about a
week's time by a hundred people who want
to try it so it might be worth coming to
Yubari if you want to claim you've
eaten a 3 million yen, 26 thousand dollar melon.
If you really want to chow down on these
melons visit the all-you-can-eat
house next door.
For 30 minutes you'll get trays of cut
melons delivered to you.
A very heavenly experience
well worth the 2500 yen or
about 20 dollars.
Fujimoto: We had melons of 3 ranks at this year's auction.
Good, Very Good, and Excellent.
The biggest melon in the Excellent "Shu" rank
was sold at 3 million yen ($24,000).
The 3 million yen will be divided among all the farmers
who shipped the Excellent rank melons to the auction.
Once the farmers bring Yubari Melons to JA co-op,
they become JA's melons.
We do strict quality checks.
When they pass, they become our property.
We represent Yubari King Melons together.
John: Afterwards I visited an old
friend of mine: Melonkuma.
In 2016 at the Sapporo Snow Festival
I tried really hard to make friends with him.
Then this happened.
[John screams]
Today he's home at his house in Yubari.
When he's home he's doing chores around
the house like this.
Ferocious
and lovable.
And on this day my friend.
I think.
[John screams.... again]
Any trip to Yubari must end with a
Yubari King melon soft ice cream cone.
If you're in Japan at the right time
take a trip up to Hokkaido to visit Yubari.
Have a melon and knowing where it comes
from I think you appreciate the taste
a lot more.
If you liked this episode consider
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and I'll take you on an adventure to
every single corner of this
amazing country.
Mata ne! (See you again!)