Japan’s fruits are so expensive because of three reasons: 1) Expensive real estate – The rent or ownership of real estate is high (higher than some of the countries in the world) and it is even scarce. Since a person who wants to grow fruit which takes several years to mature and bear fruit has to pay a high amount of money for his land area, the price of fruit becomes expensive, too, 2) Obsession with perfection – Japanese are known to want to produce cosmetically perfect fruit.
Hence, they put a great amount of effort and labor to caring and protecting the trees and fruits, and 3) Some fruits are a symbol of status – a perfect example of this is the Yubari King which symbolizes Japan’s wealth. There was one instance wherein it was bought at an auction for around 3 million Japanese Yen or more than 26,000 US dollars.