Can You Taste the Difference Between a $140 Melon and a $10 Melon?

Japan is home to some super expensive fruit. You could easily drop several hundred dollars on fancy melons or berries in Tokyo. These luxury fruits are bred to look aesthetically perfect and are usually given as gifts. But can you taste the difference between fancy Japanese fruit and what you might normally purchase at the grocery store? Since it's melon season in Japan, two YouTubers decided to find out. Simon of the YouTube channel EatYourSushi—which informally changed its name from EatYourKimchi after he and his wife-slash-video-making-partner Martina moved from Seoul to Tokyo in 2016—decided to get a regularly priced melon for about $10 and a luxury melon for $140.

Simon then ran a taste test to see if he and Martina could taste the difference. The more expensive melon definitely looked better, in that it was rounder and more uniform in color. But, as Martina noted, "I don't care how it looks." How does a $140 melon taste?

After collectively freaking out about the price of the melon (which, for the record, cost more than Martina has ever spent on a pair of shoes), Simon sliced into the fruit. And though both melons were delicious, the two could taste a difference between the luxury musk melon and the garden variety melon from the grocery store.

Both Simon and Martina agreed that the $10 melon was very good and tasted similar to melon candy. The more expensive melon tasted more like honey, according to Simon, but with a juicier texture that's closer to a soft mango than a crunchy melon, added Martina.

Was the luxury melon worth the price, though? While it tasted better than the grocery store melon, the duo agreed it wasn't $130 better. "If the normal one is 980 [yen], I would spend $5 more for a different kind of melon," Martina said. But not $130 more. "To spend this kind of money on a melon is just crazy." After all, that's, like, at least two new pairs of shoes.