This is certainly false, as few heritage fruit and vegetable breeds approach the size of their commercial counterparts. Larger isn't better most of the time though, and smaller versions tend to haver stronger, more intense taste.
Coming from Italy, I'm always amazed how large US tomatoes/zucchini/eggplants/etc are, and those big, watery vegetables are almost always tasteless in comparison.
I think it's a combination of selecting varieties that produce bigger fruit, as well as waiting longer to pick, so as to produce the largest (most water-heavy) produce.
From Melbourne, @SamBam what do think is the reason?
My own personal observation, growing both Roma and large Beaf steak variety tomatoes in a home plot, is it's a combination of cultivar and heat. I agree on variety chosen. The commercial varieties are combinations of size, colour, season and preservation. Not necessarily taste. So it maybe the sugar content.
Leave the tomatoes in that sun, pick them when they are ripe and the taste is there. Back at the supermarket, picked early and cooled... not so much flavour.
I only saw zucchini for sale once in Japan and, for what is nearly a prolific weed -- can hardly give away all zucchinis if you have one plant, the zucchini cost like $10 a piece so I refused to buy them.
The most commonly sold variety of eggplant in Japan is the Italian type which is hardly sold in the US and naturally smaller than the US standard regular / classic type. So not really comparable.
Cucumber variety is also different. The US normally sells straight 8 type. The Japan variety is, I think, a Japanese cucumber and a different type. So not comparable.
Out of season? We buy them for 100 yen, which is still more than free, but they they taste better than the huge ones I've had in the US.
Tomatoes tend to be beefsteak, so not very good for sauces, but big and nice in salads, or mini tomatoes.
Considering they aren't my favorite, anything above a yen is too much.
I mean, in our defense, if we actually ate mostly or only what was in season locally, we would mostly live on squash, beans, bread, and potatoes. Real, tasty vegetables are just plain difficult to grow across much of the country, and shipping from the places with easy growing to the places with difficult growing brings in all the tradeoffs of trucked produce.
The US occupation of Japan was remarkable in many ways and they made many laws which are still on the books (including the bizarre pornography laws that still exist here!). Japanese culture is such that people don't tend to question authority and so they will follow the law even if they think it is strange. Many of the really good laws in Japan were put in place during the occupation, but they are things that you would never be able to get away with in most other countries. The current agriculture system is one of those things.
What they did was mandate that designated farm land could never change designation. So it is illegal to build on farm land. They also made it illegal to sell farm land. The only time farm land is for sale in Japan is when the owning family dies out. The resulting sale has really complicated rules which I don't understand. The result of this is that all farms are small and they are owned by a wide variety of families. The modern factory farm basically just doesn't exist here (except up in Hokkaido where there is a lot more room -- and I think people are farming on non-farm designated land).
In addition to this, they set up a food distribution monopoly. This food distribution monopoly was mandated to distribute food locally. The intent was to have many, many small farms making many, many different products and to have very good distribution from the farms to cities -- because all produce is local. This created an incredibly robust (if inefficient from a price perspective) production and distribution system.
The third piece of the puzzle is that they made the import of all essential food products illegal. Although due to external pressures this is very much relaxed now, it is still illegal to import rice for anything other than glue manufacture, for instance (although possibly it is legal now for alcohol production... I can't remember). This allowed the distribution monopoly to dictate prices that would allow local production to continue.
This system works fantastically well. Many foreigners are skeptical (and frustrated with their inability to trade -- a fact that constantly amuses me given that it was set up by the US in the first place). However, I live in the country side. When I go to the grocery store the food in it is grown by my neighbours. They even write the farmer's name on the bags of produce (and even have a picture of them!) Some food is grown one or two prefectures away. A very small amount (like dairy products) is produced in places like Hokkaido. Only recently have I started seeing produce from other places in the world.
What has this to do with the topic? I'm glad you asked! Produce is picked fresh and put in the store that day or the next day. I know this because the JA (now a private semi-monopoly food distributor) is down the road from me. Anybody can go in and watch them work (farmers are going in an out of there all the time).
So when you have tomatoes, for example, they are red when they are picked. They go to the JA, sit for a couple of hours and then go to the store. The store holds produce on average for 2-3 days, apparently. Fruit is sweet because it is ripe. It also doesn't last. Many foreigners are surprised when they buy a basket of strawberries and it is rotten in 2 days.
So even though Japanese farmers choose to grow larger varieties, the produce in the store is dramatically better than the produce you normally find in grocery stores around the world.
The other thing is that fruit and vegetables are expensive. Normally I think it's nearly twice as expensive as what I was used to in Canada. What this means is that for fruit production, they often limit yield. Not only that, but they do things like manually tie paper bags around fruit when it is growing so that it does not get eaten by birds. When they grow melons (one of the specialties of my area), the farmer gets up every day and turns them so that the sugar is evenly distributed through the whole melon (if you don't do this, the side that was nearest the ground is dramatically sweeter -- you can test this yourself by cutting a melon in half and tasting it blindfolded). Production is very, very small and prices are very, very high so they can do this kind of thing that would be crazy anywhere else.
For the very best fruit, the farmers charge insane prices. The best apple from a crop of apples will be sold for upwards of $10 US -- for a single apple. Melons can go for as much as $100 US. A perfect bunch of grapes, picked at the perfect time can be $20.
I have friends who own businesses and thanks to the gift culture in Japan, they often receive these super-fruits from their farmer customers. Since they receive more than they can eat, I sometimes benefit from a re-gift (also part of the wonderful Japanese gift culture). I seriously have never eaten fruit like this before -- even from a home grown garden. These farmers are professionals and it shows in their work.
So you are correct, but are discounting the impact that the Japanese agricultural system has on the produce. It would be interesting to see what would happen if the Japanese people would get over their obsession of big fruit. I can't imagine how delicious they could make good varieties.
I live in Romania. By comparison, Romania has cheaper food, and much of it is tastier, including: meat, and especially smoked pork meat, cheese - you have to taste Romanian cheese from the mountains, it just doesn't compare to the poor examples of cheese I found in Japan. Our breads are 100 times better, you can find anything - long, short, round, crunchy, fluffy, with brown flower, multi flowers, seeds, anything really, except the Japanese originals: "mellon bread", "curry bread" and "anpan".
Bottled water tastes better in Romania, but Japanese tap water is amazing (never seen such good tap water, I drunk from the faucet). Romanian beer is much tastier too - I suppose it's because of better water. Wine - well, Japanese wines from the market are bad, and expensive. In my country I can find wine tasting 10 times better at a quarter of the price. Sake - I tried it but I don't like the taste much. Pickled vegetables - well, I would say we're even on this domain - Japanese have their own, pickled ginger and such, Romania has its own, usually cucumbers, peppers, cabbage, cauliflower and mellon (so tasty, pickled mellon).
So I'd give Japan a good grade overall, the food is tasty but different, mostly rice and noodles, very expensive, and in many domains lacking by comparison to food I know from my country. What I liked the most are - bento boxes, udon, mochi daifuku (very interesting tactile sensation), sushi and tempura.
Bread just isn't eaten that much in Japan, so obviously it's not as good as in Romania (which is once again far behind bread from Germany or France). Cheese is another product that just isn't quite as popular in Japan (in most of Asia for that matter, which is probably due to an overall much higher percentage of people with lactose intolerance) and doesn't have the same history and cultural significance cheese and other milk products have in Europe.
The sushi you get in Japan (and many other fish dishes for that matter) is far and beyond anything you could find in Romania for comparison, which is once again because fish just hasn't played the same important role in the history of Romanian food.
Yakitori is maybe something you can compare, because you find a lot of grilled goods at corner bistros in Romania as well and usually the quality in Japan is far beyond what you can get in Romania.
Ultimately what I'm getting at is that most countries probably excel at some foods and not at others. The further they are apart geographically and culturally the harder it gets to compare them I think.
It is very unfortunate that you found sake (nihonshu is what it is normally called -- sake just refers to any alcohol in Japan) not to be of your liking. There are thousands of nihonshu producers in Japan and the flavours range really dramatically. It can be sweet or dry, fruity or flowery. Not everybody likes it though.
I've never had Romanian beer, but I have heard that it is excellent. Japanese mainstream lagers are better than most mainstream Euro lagers, but not by any great margin. The higher quality mainstream lagers (Suntory The Premium Malts, Ebisu, and Kirin Ichiban Shibori) are all decent versions of German lager styles. Suntory has a cheaper "Malts" brand which is actually quite a good Munchner Helles IMHO. But as you say, it's nothing to write home about. Ji-beeru (micro brewery beer) is where it is at, but the movement is still in its infancy. There are many, many really excellent hefeweizen beers, but microbreweries are mostly concentrating on crazy styles.
Pickles... Don't get me started on pickles :-) Japanese pickles are awesome. They are also really regional, so if you are interested in pickles it pays to travel around to many small cities to try them. It's kind of unfortunate that many of the best pickles are quite hard to buy, but you should be able to get a decent variety at various omiyage shops.
If you come back again, it helps quite a bit to travel outside of the big cities. For example, it is really unusual to spend more than about 700 yen (7 US dollars) on a meal at a restaurant around where I live. And there is no tipping. Like many places in Europe, the best food is often found in the izakayas (bar/pub). In these places you eat otsumami (finger food???) while you are drinking. Apart from formal meals, this epitomises Japanese cuisine in my mind. The main things you will find are sashimi, yakitori, grilled fish, deep fried everything, and various kinds of stews.
It's really unfortunate, but it's quite difficult for travellers to experience the cuisine of Japan without having a guide who knows the area. I suppose this might also be true of Romania!
(Mind, we also export the good stuff, so Israelis are perfectly used to buying misshapen produce and enjoying it.)