Japanese Quality: Even Italian tomato experts were surprised. This is Japan's tomato industry.

While catching up on my Japanese TV episodes, I ran into 1 which concentrated on Japan's tomato industry. Japanese tomatoes (and vegetables in general) are very high in quality where ever you go. The colour, shape, shine and taste turns out to be perfect even without "picking" at the supermarket. How do they do this? This TV program asked Italian tomato experts to discover the "How" and here's what they found:

1. 24 kinds : While countries like Italy have 3 different types of tomatoes to sell commercially (small, medium and large), Japan has 24 different kinds. As seen above, first they categorize the tomato in size (6 sizes), then rank (A-D). 
2. How do they categorize this?:  Manually & by machine. After the tomatoes are sorted by size,  factory workers visually check the tomato's head (with the leaf) and rank it from A-D. This is done by the factory workers carefully controlling 4 different buttons on a super fast conveyor belt (it takes them ~3 seconds per tomato). These workers are super trained.

1. After the factory workers:  They use machines and check the bottom of the tomato and categorize it by rank (A-D). If the top was an "A", and the bottom was a "D", the tomato will end up being ranked "D".
2. Finally...: The tomatoes are taken to check the "sweetness" through a machine. This of course determines the final decision of the tomato's rank.

Super detail oriented  - right?
But this careful Japanese detail results in great customer experience throughout the country. Customers know that they can trust Japanese tomatoes. I must say that this high expectation from customers can result in spoiled customers and in extreme negative comments if the products are not up to par, but this helps in a healthy competition! This may be why Japanese products are so high in quality. Passion coming from suppliers and trust coming from consumers..

More "Japanese quality" series comin' up! Let me know if you have a specific product/service you would like to learn more about in terms of quality.