The Almighty Daikon

Since coming to Japan, I've become much more aware of quantity/quality/price/season of produce. For instance, I typically pay about 280 yen/apple "ringo" (granted, it could almost feed a whole class of kindergarteners), snow peas seem to be about 15-20/200 yen and meticulously lined up like a pack of fresh pencils, strawberries "ichigo" are DIVINE and SO red, and the king of all the fruits is apparently the canteloupe, because I have never seen them for less than 1200 yen, and the other day saw one for 3,000 yen (I could go to Fukuoka for less than that!). I've heard that instead of bringing flowers to someone in the hospital, you can bring a cantaloupe. Hmmm. Anyway - Mikans (tangerine-y oranges), when in season, are "yasui" - cheap - 6-8 for 100 yen, but now they're up to 380. Daikon, as pictured here, however, are VERY cool. A mere 68 yen for a vegetable the size of your forearm (or whole arm - if you're Surinak-sized!). If you click on the link, you see that they are used in various ways, but I just made a marinated daikon & cucumber salad tonight that was quite good. The daikon in this photo are being dried so that they can be pickled (I hope!). And to the FMFPeeps - didn't Decker san have some kind of stuffed or dancing daikon? I'm picturing it in Kitty chan's hoteru room in a face off against Godzirra??? (Did I have too much sake that night?)