strawberries
It’s strawberry season in Japan! Bright red ruby-like berries are now on display at supermarkets everywhere, and many restaurants and pastry shops are promoting strawberry cakes and confectionaries. And it all looks positively mouth-watering. But a certain berry that has recently been the topic of attention among Japanese Twitter users may be almost too cute to eat!

Why all the fuss over a strawberry? Because this one looks exactly like a cat’s face. And to me, it actually looks very much like Hello Kitty’s face (without her signature ribbon, of course). It almost made me wonder if this piece of fruit was genetically engineered by Sanrio! You can see for yourself in the picture below.

Kitty Berry

Isn’t that just precious? (Now, I know that engineered or designed food ingredients are a highly controversial subject at best, and I’m sorry for sounding so superficial, but when I first saw this picture, I couldn’t help imagining how darn cute it would be if they could mass produce this strawberry.) The picture was first tweeted by user @ebi_25 on January 26 and so far has been retweeted over 1,900 times.

According to information provided by websites and articles on strawberries, such uniquely shaped strawberries are a result of a glitch in the flower bud differentiation process which occurs as the leaf bud changes into a flower bud. Such berries are apparently safe to eat, as the unusual shape formation doesn’t affect the nutritional composition of the fruit, and it seems that user @ebi_25, too, ate the cat-shaped berry after posting the picture.

Well, since the adorable “cat strawberry” is no more, I guess we’ll just have to satisfy ourselves with fantasies of delectable sweets made from regular berries. Sweet dreams, everyone!

strawberry daifukuphoto: snotch

strawberry cakephoto: Casa Mingo via Amazon JP

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAphoto: Per Ola Wiberg

Source and cat strawberry photo: twitter @ebi_25 (Japanese) via Netallica (Japanese)
Top image (strawberries) by is_kyoto_jp