What do you come up with for Japanese winter fruits? I would definitely say “Mikan”!
Mikan is available around October at the earliest, and the best season, when mikan becomes the sweetest and tastiest, is from December to January. Because it’s so sweet and so juicy, it’s almost like drinking juice.
The size is small enough to fit in a child’s hand, and I can eat up two to three mikans at once. Sometimes I buy mikan in a big box like 5kg or 10kg, but the mikan disappears in no time! What a mysterious fruit! As people tend to eat too much mikan, we are often told by family or friends “If you eat too much mikan, your palms will turn yellow!”
Each person has his or her own style of peeling and eating mikan. Some people delicately remove the white lines on the inner skin and eat segment by segment (like in the picture below), while other people wildly cram some segments at once or even a whole mikan into their mouth right after peeling the outer skin. By watching how the person does with mikan, we might be able to assume his or her personality.
You can easily find mikan during the winter at a reasonable price to other fruits. Frozen mikan is commonly served as a dessert in school lunches.
In the warm school room in winter, when I put a solid frozen segment of mikan into my mouth….” Ouch!” Brain freeze! That is a precious memory of my childhood.
My name is Mari. I’m a native Japanese living in Japan.
I’m writing about 365 stories of Japanese daily life and culture based on my own experiences and perspectives.
#008 story is about Mikan, a Japanese fruit.