Well it continues to rain in Japan while we continue to discover Japan. We have taken a trip to Nara, a city that was a capital of Japan in 18th century. This town is famous for the biggest wooden statue of Buddha in the world. The statue is truly grandiose, and just to give you an idea of how grand it is there’s a wooden log with a hole the size of Buddha nostril. It is believed that people who go through this hole become enlightened, so a few of us have become enlightened. However, after the grandiose Buddha, we witnessed truly grandiose prices for certain fruits. I was looking at the prices and I was thinking how often I complain about fruit prices in Nashville…Let just do a few comparisons since I am an economist. My last trip to Costco I bought 3 cantaloupes for 5 dollars, well it would cost me 120 dollars in Japan only for two of them. I just stood in front of those perfect cantaloupes afraid to move and afraid to make them less perfect with my presence.
Then my eyes moved down the shelf to find out that two mangoes were 70 dollars, and a combination of two mangoes and some cherries was 170 dollars…Well so much for fruit in Japan. I love fruit, but I don’t love it that much. Moreover, referring to the marginal utility theory there’s no way that the satisfaction of consuming those cantaloupes could be greater than cost. Therefore still reflecting on the fruit pricing in Japan, I walked to the sushi counter, where I got 10 very fresh sushi for just 5 dollars. Not too bad after all!