Strawberries

It is いちご (ichigo - strawberry) season here in Japan, which means that baskets of bright red strawberries are always the first thing to great you when you enter a store. And strawberry flavored everything - the Japanese are really into flavoring everything with whatever fruit happens to be in season or locally grown, and luckily strawberry lends itself well to that. (Cherry blossoms, not so much - I had cherry blossom flavored potato chips before, and wouldn't recommend them.) My personal favorites are the Mejii strawberry chocolate (taste JUST like real strawberries) and the mochi with a whole strawberry inside it - yum!

The local farms also do something called an いちごたべほだい, where you pay a flat fee and get to go in the field and pick and eat as many strawberries as you can in 30 minutes. The only thing is you can't take any home with you. As much as I love strawberries, I am not going to pay 20 bucks to stuff myself with them.

Ok, but the real reason for this post was to share this -- my friend learned this from a strawberry farmer -- the best way to eat them is to cut off the tops, then eat from top to bottom. The reason - the tip is much sweeter, so if you do it this way, you are left with the best taste in your mouth when you finish. Try it, it's true!