Thursday, August 8, 2013

Furano's treasured melons (and other delicious products!)

A cone of delicious lavender and melon
soft serve ice cream at Farm Tomita

 Near Farm Tomita's flower fields are to be found
covered rows of precious Furano melons

The price tag bears testimony to these being 
no ordinary melons in the picture! :O

As I reported to a friend, I ate ice cream pretty much every day on my recent Hokkaido holiday (and also drank a glass of milk each night).  This will come as no surprise to those who know how wonderful the northern Japanese island's dairy products are.  

Among the flavors of ice cream that I had in Hokkaido were yuzu, green tea, peach and Kyoho grape. In addition, at Farm Tomita, I had a cone of soft serve ice cream that was a mix of lavender and melon!

By now, this blog's readers know full well that Furano is famous for its lavender fields.  But visitors to the Furano area will additionally realize that this part of Japan also is where Furano melon is grown.

Although not as well known as the melons of Yubari, the melons of Furano also can command a pretty price -- as in 9,000 Yen (i.e., around HK$727.26 or US$93.76) for a box of four!  I have to admit that I baulked at paying such high prices to taste a Furano melon.  Instead, I contented myself with "just" eating that melon and lavender ice cream -- and, also, a 400 Yen (i.e., HK$32.31 or US$4.17) ear of Furano sweet corn which was so sweet that a part of me wonders if it had been injected with or cooked in sugar water!!

More than incidentally, on the walk from Farm Tomita to Lavender Farm Station, my mother and I passed by rice fields and also melon fields.  The rice fields looked beautiful, with the stalks of rice swaying in the windy breeze that rippled through them, while some of the signs posted in the melon fields got me smiling.  

More specifically, I found it pretty amusing to see signs in four different languages (Japanese, English, Chinese and Korean) asking people not to enter them -- and pretty much everyone who passed by obeying those signs.  How nice it can be, right, that visitors from different parts of the world all will respect the wishes of farmers -- and without the farmers needing to issue any threats against anyone who disobeys or ignores their wishes? :)

4 comments:

alejna said...

What intriguing ice cream flavors! Beautiful colors, too.

I hadn't heard of such expensive melons. (But I think there must be a decimal point missing in the US $ price for the box of melons--I hope that it's not really over 9 thousand dollars! I think my heart missed a beat at the thought. Not that I don't enjoy a good melon...)

YTSL said...

Hi Alejna --

Thanks for spotting that a decimal point was missing! Yes, that box of four melons "only" costs US$93.76 -- have duly added in the hitherto missing decimal point! ;O

sarah bailey knight said...

HI ytsl,

The different flavors of soft serve ice cream in Japan are fun to have, aren't they.

The most expensive melon I've seen in Japan was US $150. I must have spent 10 minutes just looking at it :-)

YTSL said...

Hi sarah sbk --

They are indeed -- and have loved pretty much everyone I've tried!

Re the US$150 melon you saw -- that must have been a Yubari melon!!!! Was it an interesting shape or...?! :O