Japanese Melon Museum you say?

Have you ever had the chance to eat a Japanese melon bar? Or melon bread? Well Japan has done more for melons than just process them into frozen and baked snacks of amazing amusingness.

About forty years ago Noriyuki Fujishita (former professor of Osaka Prefecture University, my pretend alma matar!) discovered probably the smallest melon in the world, the Weed Melon! (or MG 16 if you want to get technical and boring) The melon is native to Megi Island of the Kagawa Prefecture.

Since Fujishita’s historic discovery the Weed Melon has been mostly used for feeding livestock (because apparently they are bitter), but the tourism association of Megi Island, headed by it’s chairman, Yoshikio Kawai, has bigger plans.

They plan to sell them, not just to livestock, but to tourists! Human tourists! In the form of a pickle! How much cooler can you get you ask? Well if you read the first three words of the title then you already know - the tourism association of Megi Island plans to build a museum of melons... I repeat, a museum of melons! With melons, “from around the world,” Kawai said. As if there are not already four-hundred- and-nineteen reasons to visit Japan, they want to build a melon museum! If I were from Japan I would say, “On behalf of Japan, you’re welcome.”

I hope that was a productive first post for me, and I hope you find much excitement in melons. *gives you big thumbs up*

source: Kyodo News