Citrus -- Variations on a theme

That's not a grapefruit on the left and not an orange in the middle.

In addition to the justly famed Japanese tangerines, often called Mandarin Oranges in the U.S., Japanese farmers grow a wide variety of citrus, none of which is usually found in American supermarkets. The one of the left is a ponkan (ポンカン); the one in the middle, a hasaku (ハサク). As Douglas Adams would have put it, a ponkan is almost exactly totally not like a grapefruit. The hasaku is sort of an orange in taste. The difference is, in both cases, that both are less flavorful, less sweet, and far less easy to peel and eat than their (to me) more familiar citrus family cousins.

You can buy both oranges and grapefruit in local supermarkets. The grapefruit are usually about 100 yen (about a dollar) and range in quality from poor to excellent, regardless of price. I've even (once) found magnificent Indian River grapefruit for 100 yen. The oranges, normally California navels (food from California is extremely saleable here), cost about 70 to 100 yen each and usually aren't very good.