SAPPORO ¨C A box of two Yubari melons fetched a record ?5.8 million at this season¡¯s first auction held in?Sapporo on Friday.
The winning bid came from Futami-Seika, a fruit and vegetable wholesaler based in the city of Kushiro in Hokkaido.
The melons will go on display at Keio Store¡¯s Sakuragaoka supermarket in the city of Tama, western Tokyo, before tasting events begin next week.
¡°We have the finest crop,¡± said Hirokazu Okubo, an executive with the wholesaler. ¡°We want people across Japan to savor Yubari melons.¡±
A total of 912 melons went under the hammer at the day¡¯s auction at the Sapporo Central Wholesale Market.
The famed cantaloupes, a specialty of the city of Yubari in Hokkaido, benefited from light winter snowfall and favorable spring weather, allowing crops to mature smoothly this year, according to the city¡¯s agricultural cooperative.
The cooperative aims to ship 3,086 tons of Yubari melons this season and generate roughly ?2.1 billion in sales.
The city of Yubari is nearing the end of a long fiscal rehabilitation process after the once-major coal mining hub collapsed under massive debt and became the nation¡¯s only municipality placed under a state-supervised fiscal reconstruction program. The city is expected to clear its liabilities by the end of the current fiscal year.
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