In this season, everyone on the train is coughing and hacking away with the seasonal cold. I’m not immune and last week I finally caught my yearly march flu. So to pump up my vitamin-c intake, I popped into the local Livre Keisei, the supermarket just near my train station, to get some mikans.

Now it’s mikan time, so the store was full of their orangy goodness. The ones that really tempted me though, were the ones that were the most beautifully packaged. I’m a sucker for pretty packaging and this was the best presentation of mikan I’d ever seen in my life. There were 3 different sizes, S,M & L, and you could buy different numbers of mikan in each package. The packages with 10 mikans were arranged in a circle, so that looking at it from the side, it made the shape of a flower. Back where I’m from, mikans are unceremoniously dumped into a bag to fall in whatever shape they please, but having them placed exactly not only looked good, but it saved space and allowed the packages to be stacked nicely. Efficient!

Packages of L size were 8 per bag, and arranged in a sort of triangular shape. Pleasing enough, but not as much as the flower shape.

As an added bonus, the name of the mikan was Mikka Mikan, mikans from the third of March, which is Hina Matsuri in Japan. With my cold addled brain, it took me a good 5 minutes before i copped onto this cheezy joke.

Related articles:

1. Shape of the Yamanote Line
2. Sweet Savoury Aroma Coffee in a Cup

Tags: food, japan, japanese, mikan, oranges, packaging, shopping

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 11:56 and is filed under The Bark. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.