Anyone for shop-bought strawberries at well over a dollar each? Not Hiroshi Watanabe, president of Fukuoka Agricultural Products Trading.

Although Mr Watanabe’s job involves promoting fruit exports from Fukuoka, he decided to pass when he found punnets of nine to 12 of the south-western Japanese prefecture’s flagship Amaou strawberries on sale in Hong Kong for the equivalent of a princely $15 (€11.50, £10.30).