alt Hacker NewsGrapes are commonly peeled in Japan, and people will look at you strangely if you eat them skin on. However, Japanese grapes are huge and have a thick, astringent skin that peels off easily.
Likewise, when Japanese people go overseas and start peeling grapes, people look at them strangely. Eventually they figure out that Western grapes are small, hard to peel and the skins are thin and nearly tasteless, so they adopt our barbarian habits too.
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My dad would peel the skin of every fruit, including grapes, which is how I learned to do it.
Fun fact: a lot of people think artificial grape flavoring doesn't taste like grapes. And that the "Welch's concord grape jam" variety of jams is artificially flavored.
Nope, that's just what some grapes taste like. There's a Korean variety, and Concord at least. Wiki says it's this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitis_labrusca
I've had this conversation and the way I explained it is that our grapes are closer to the boba in bubble tea. It's not quite right (they don't pop quite as much) and boba isn't Japanese, but it gets the point across.