Welcome to a very sunny Iwate prefecture.

Ryotaro and I are just arriving at Taira apple farms.

Sharla: What are we doing here? Ryotaro: Just to search for this the best apple I ever had in my life.

You've given me some really high expectations.

Yeah I did that because… I mean… this apple is so special that if you go to the market in Tokyo for instance right?

And just one apple could cost like 30 dollars.

Japan does have a reputation for very expensive fruit.

You'll see when we visit this farm. The special care they put into growing their produce.

That's the reason that it costs so much and it does taste amazing. So I'm expecting some really good apples today.

So let's go meet the farmer and pick some fruit.

So we kept hearing this really loud gunshot and the farmer told us that it's an automatic air gun to scare off bears

because they've had lots of bears in the area eating their apples recently.

Like Winnie the Pooh.

Apparently they ate 200 of his apples. Two bears!

So it's time to go pick some apples now.

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Wow! Look at the difference!

That's a perfect apple!

So, this darker yellow, they call ”mitsu” in Japan and this is like what you're looking for with a premium apple.

You want it to have lots of ”mitsu” or I guess that would be ”honey” in English

and that's the really sweet part, so it makes the apple taste really good.

My first apple! I've never picked apples before. It's my first time!

They're so big!

Oh, this one looks good.

It's like picking presents off the trees. They're so cute!

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All right, let's try them! I can't wait to cut them open and see what the inside looks like.

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Itadakimasu! I'm gonna try my first Haruka apple.

Oh…Doesn't even taste like an apple!

That's so good. It actually tastes more like a pear.

That's amazing!

That was easily the best apple I've ever had. 10 out of 10!

If you want a good apple, come to Iwate!

So I'm going to try a piece of the apple that didn't have the cover on it to see if it's any different.

Yeah! It actually tastes a little different.

I would say the one with the cover tastes better. Do you think so?

Ryotaro agrees. Still amazing though.

So if you want to try these Haruka apples for yourself Iwate prefecture is the place to do it.

They're mostly grown here.

You can also find some farms in Yamagata and Aomori prefectures that grow them as well but Iwate is the home of them.

So if you want the original Haruka apple you should come up here to try them.

You can find them for sale in the supermarket and the ones that make it to the supermarket are the highest level of apple.

So they actually go through rigorous testing at a factory, that we're gonna go check out in a minute here, to divide the apples between

the sweeter ones and the not so sweet ones.

They have a special certification process for finding the best of the Haruka apples and those are called Fuyukoi.

So we're going to take some of the apples that we picked today over to the factory, put them through the testing process

and see if any of them make it to the special level of Fuyukoi apple. The best apple you can get here in Iwate.

So the farmer brings their harvest here in baskets like this, drops it off and the first process that it goes through is the sorting area

where they are split into three different categories.

Sharla: So level one… Ryotaro: That's looking really good, smooth, everything on… Just looking at the surface, right.

Sharla: Like no marks on it at all. Perfect looking apples makes it to level one.

Sharla: Level two…. Ryotaro: Okay looking one Sharla: Maybe like one little mark but not too bad.

And then level three. It has a few marks on it but still okay. It could still be sold.

And then if it's worse than that, it gets put into the no good pile

And most of the no-good apples get made into juice unless they are like properly rotten or a bird or a bug has eaten them or something like that.

So not much goes to waste. Ryotaro: Little.

You would make juice from this, right?

Ryotaro: Just talked about like the honey, the ”mitsu” Sharla: The ”mitsu”, yeah

This guy had too much ”mitsu” on the surface.

Sharla: Too much! It's supposed to be right in the middle, the ”mitsu”, but it's coming all the way out to the edge of the skin. So it's too good!

Just another failure!

They all go through this laser tester.

Yeah. So this is the cool thing. They have a laser that tests the sweetness, the sugar content of each apple

to see if it's good enough to be considered the Fuyukoi premium apple.

And also they check figure how much the honey is there, the ”mitsu”.

Sharla: Oh the ”mitsu” as well? Ryotaro: yeah ”mitsu” as well.

Sharla: With the laser? Ryotaro: With the laser too. Sharla: So high-tech!

To become normal Fuyukoi and you need to have

50% of the sugar content and 2.5% of the ”mitsu”, the honey.

To become premium Fuyukoi you need to have 60% of the sugar and more than 3.0% of the mitsu.

They're gonna let me choose one of the regular Haruka apples and one of the premium Fuyukoi and we're gonna cut them in half and see if we can see a difference.

So these ones here are regular Haruka.

This one looks really nice.

Okay so here's the regular Haruka and now let's get a premium Fuyukoi.

I take this one!

Now let's cut them open and see the difference. Don't mix them up!

So the thing is: they look the same! Sharla: Yeah.

Ryotaro: You can't tell the difference at all, can you? Sharla: No, you can't you really can't tell!

Welcome to Ryotaros kitchen!

Today I'm going to cut apples.

So first of all I'm going to cut the ordinary… normal…

Sharla: Do you remember which one's which?

Not sure! But let's see!

Right… this is like ordinary, the ordinary one. Sharla: Oh okay… That must be the Haruka one!

And this is premium, premium Fuyukoi!

See that?! Woow!

Ryotaro: So this is the one… Sharla: That's the regular one Ryotaro: Okay let's try!

Oh, still amazing!

Ryotaro: Oh it's so good! Sharla: It's still the best apple I've ever had.

Wow!

Ryotaro: I can't believe this is like… Sharla: It's so juicy! Ryotaro: Yeah!

Sharla: It looks like a kiwi! Ryotaro: Yeah, it does!

Premium Fuyukoi!

These ones really remind me of pears.

The flavor is much closer to a pear than the regular Haruka.

You guys need to try this. What you think of as an apple will be changed forever.

This is nothing like the apples I have back in Canada.

So um… these apples eventually go to the supermarket, so you will know how sweet this is when you buy it.

But some farmers, they sell their apples on their own at the roadside shop.

It's like a draw, when you buy it from those farmers shops.

When you open it, it might have lots of ”mitsu”, a lot of sweetness but you might just get a ordinary apple without any sweetness.

Let me just open up a box of apples that's worth a hundred dollars.

Look how nicely packaged and with a brochure, the flyer…

And then here you go! The apples!

Nine of them, hundred dollars.

Would you? I would!

So hopefully this peek into the apple harvesting process up here in Iwate prefecture kind of gave you guys an idea about

why the prices of fruit here in Japan are quite a bit higher than what you're used to back home.

If you've yet to see our previous episode that Ryotaro and I filmed in Iwate prefecture do go check that out.

I'll have it linked down below you can get some other ideas for fun things to do up here in Iwate.

I hope you guys enjoyed the videos up here.

Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you again very soon! Bye for now!

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