Pricele #60: Apples (1 kg) in Japan 🇯🇵

Apples separate the countries that grow them from the countries that fly them in. They need a temperate climate and cold storage, so in tropical and high-income import markets a kilogram can cost several times what it does in a producing country, which is why the top of this table looks nothing like the top of the others.

Of the 32 countries priced for apples, Japan ranks #3 from the top at $4.94, 1.7× the median of $2.84.

Japan is the clearest case in the game of a country that stopped feeling expensive. A weak yen has pushed dollar prices well below where they sat a decade ago, and the Big Mac Index now scores the yen as one of the most undervalued major currencies. Fruit is the exception, since premium apples are a gift category and priced like one. Japan also runs one of the few consumption taxes that changes with how you consume: 10% standard, but 8% on food and non-alcoholic drinks bought to take away, so the same coffee is taxed differently depending on whether you sit down with it. For a table built partly out of café items, that distinction is not academic.

See the full table for apples in every country or everything priced in Japan.