Hey, nice mellons!

How much would you pay for a square watermellon? IN Japan, they’ve become a trendy (and expensive) designer fruit:

To make it happen, farmers grew the melons in glass boxes and the fruit then naturally assumed the same shape. Today the cuboid watermelons are hand-picked and shipped all over Japan.

But the fruit, on sale in a selection of department stores and upmarket supermarkets, appeals mainly to the wealthy and fashion-conscious of Tokyo and Osaka, Japan’s two major cities.

Each melon sells for 10,000 yen, equivalent to about $83. It is almost double, or even triple, that of a normal watermelon.

“I can’t buy it, it is too expensive,” said a woman browsing at a department store in the southern city of Takamatsu.

So assuming a square mellon is triple the cost of a round mellon in Japan, that would mean a round mellon would still cost roughly $28? Yikes!