Monday, August 2, 2010

Things I'll miss: Soda

Without a doubt, the 'Pan is a land of unparalleled culinary acumen.  Japan, despite its diminutive size and ethnic homogeneity, boasts as broad a palate of flavors far too sprawling to even begin to discuss here.  Each region, each prefecture, each town sports a unique specialty to offer the hungry traveler.

The only thing deeper than the pool of culinary talent and delicacies they offer, is the pockets necessary to experience it all.  Enjoying all the Japanese dining scene has to offer is as enriching as it is costly.  If it's not the price tag of menu that's killing you, it's the cost of the trip itself.

Sadly, I leave the 'Pan hardly the gastric Perry I had originally set out to be--time and money both being the most treasured and scarce commodities in the life of an Eikaiwa teacher.

But.

Japanese flavors aren't only found in 2-star Michelin marvels or tucked away in small-town back-alleys.  For the rest of us, a taste of Japan is only as far as the convenience store.  Indeed, Japan's ample supply of soft drinks is the stuff of legend, at least for the worldly--or at least Internet-wise--fan of the 'Pan.

The journey of the soft-drink enthusiast in Japan is not unlike that of the restaurant-hunter: a voyage twisting through the sweetest, dizzying highs and the deepest, murkiest bile pits.  And honestly, an experienced effervescent explorer such as myself prefers the latter category.  Because when Japanese soda is good, it's great.  But when it's bad, it's a brand-new kind of terrible that somehow defies all logic.  It's a core-shaking, liver-clenchingly revolting experience unlike anything the West has to offer, out side of it's fascination with Justin Bieber (seriously, who is this guy?  Do you have any idea how weird it is hearing about your own country's national phenomena third-hand is?)

So join me.  Join me in my world of sugar-water.

Pepsi Ice Cucumber
This first one is very close to my heart, because it was the first Japanese novelty soda I ever tried.  Released in the summer of 2007, Pepsi Ice Cucumber was the first soda to finally hit that elusive demographic of those who like vegetables, but don't find them carbonated or liquid enough.  The result is about what you might expect: a mind-bending ride as your taste buds struggle to reconcile what they're experiencing with what millions of years of evolution dictates should not be possible in the natural world.  The result?  Not too sweet, not too strong, and not too good.
Rating: 3/5
Shortly before the genetically engineered super-clones manufactured by the seemingly legit but entirely corrupt SpliceCorp systematically slaughter and replace humanity en masse, one rogue scientist, possibly looking suspiciously like Jeff Goldblum, will bust in on a board meeting and pull out a bottle of Pepsi Ice Cucumber as proof that science can go too far.

Pepsi Baobab
No, that's not a typo.  Pepsi Baobab is a newer addition to the Pepsi novelty line and is really only remarkable in the sense that in spite of the confusing name and the depiction of the Serenghetti at dusk on the bottle, there's really nothing remarkable whatsoever about this one.  It's just a disappointingly plain and cola-like taste.
Rating: 2/5
Tastes like one part original Pepsi, one part ginger ale, and one part baobab (which I think is the stuff Rafiki smeared on Simba's face at the start of the Lion King).

Pepsi Azuki
Getting closer, here.  Again, Pepsi went to the vault to figure out the most meaningless and obscure flavors to blend with carbonated water and high-fructose corn syrup and churned out this stuff.  It has a strong, musky odor, like the scent of a man or perhaps a woman on one of those not-so-fresh-feeling days, and the pleasing color of what leaks out of a kidney badly in need of dialysis.
Rating: 3/5
This one isn't exactly good.  It's a round, dull, throbbing, sweet flavor all the way down and lingers long after the fact.  Drinking it, you can't help but feel like they accidentally skipped a step in the recipe, leaving you with a similarly round, dull, throbbing set of beverage-induced blue-balls (a term that coincidentally was introduced by PepsiCo when the decided to take Pepsi Blue off the shelves).

Pepsi Shiso
This is the first truly bad soda on this list.  While Azuki felt like it was missing something and Ice Cucumber tasted way, way too much like it was supposed to, Pepsi Shiso set the bar really high for what a bad beverage could truly wreak upon the human soul.  For the uninitiated, Shiso is a leaf not unlike peppermint, typically used as a garnish in Japanese cuisine.  It tastes a bit like peppermint, even, but way stronger without tasting any mintier, if that makes any sense.  Shiso was was never meant to be the star of the show, as this chemical monstrosity points out, like a toddler proudly showing off his latest masterpiece in the medium of porcelain.
Rating: -10/5
If I rip on other sodas later on in this entry and then give them a seemingly arbitrarily high score, here's the reason.  This liquid tragedy hits your senses like a potable Sonny Chiba, pounding your tongue relentlessly, destroying every other trace of flavor, smell, or memory of a beautiful and pure world, and making you pay a buck for the privilege.  And also an increased risk of diabetes.  This stuff is pure existential dread in a bottle, filtered through Satan's ass-pubes.  Pepsi Shiso is one of the few beverages on this list I simply lacked the fortitude to finish.

Pepsi Strong Shot
Seemingly Pepsi's attempt to make a a fashionably late arrival to the energy drink party, and with a price tag to match: over two bucks for a puny can.  Energy drinks are more or less in a class all of their own and outside the scope of this article, but I felt it worthy of a mention, seeing as how Pepsi is the most prolific contributer to this list.


Rating: 2/5
Weak.  At best.  It tastes like flat Pepsi original, and I didn't feel any more alert after drinking it.  Interesting side-note: it says on the can you have to be 15 to drink it.  The only reason I could possibly think of for this is to make younger kids want to try it.

Skal Melon Cream Soda
After a fairly mediocre start by Pepsi, we're getting into Skal's line of products.  When I first saw bottles of Skal on store shelves I was like, "what, the chewing tobacco guys?"  But actually, these dudes have a solid, if unorthodox, beverage line.  Melon Cream Soda was my most recent purchase of theirs, and it exceeded every expectation.
Rating: 5/5
Melon Cream Soda is everything a soft drink strives to be: sweet, refreshing, fizzy, flavorful, and loaded with sugar.  You'd expect the melon flavor would be too subtle and would be overpowered by all the high-fructose corn syrup and sugar, but actually it's very pronounced, leaving a satisfying summer beverage, as refreshing to sip as it is to gulp.

Skal Ramune
This is the first Skal beverage I ever tried, and one of the rarer flavors.  My first apartment had a vending machine that kept me supplied with these, right next to a beer machine.  The two machines fought bitterly for my hard-earned change--and to say that a soft-drink regularly beat out a supply of cheap, readily-available beer from a machine that couldn't judge me is saying a lot.
I couldn't find my picture of Skal Ramune, so this a rough visual representation of what it tastes like
Rating: 4/5
A year ago, I'd have given this a 5, easily.  After I moved out of that apartment, it was almost a year-and-a-half before I had another chance to try it, and it's not quite as good as I remembered it.  Maybe it's because I've since gone on to try different and better sodas, but it's not the same head-over-heels love I once felt for the sugary-sweet, powder-blue, Japanese candy-flavored beverage.  Like all Skal products, it loses its carbonation fast, and Skal Ramune seems to faster than any other.  It's not nearly as good when it's flat.  But, if you have a crack at this stuff, take it and don't hold back.  Great drink.

Skal Grape Cream Soda
Another solid entry in the Skal line, but my least favorite of the bunch.  I have to admit, with the exception of Skal Melon Cream Soda, I'm not entirely sold on Japan's (and Skal's, in particular) fascination with cream soda, partially because in Japan, "cream soda" actually means "milky."
A visual approximation of how you feel when drinking Skal Grape Cream Soda
Rating: 3/5
Not bad.  It's a strong, refreshing grape flavor that has a nice, clean aftertase.  I feel like it'd be better if it didn't look and taste like Children's Maalox, though.  This is definitely one case where being a cream soda really holds the drink back.

Sweet Kiss
Along with Skal Ramune, this was the other drink that vied for my attention at my old apartment.  These two were best buds, and at 100-yen a half-liter, they often went home together.
Seriously, this is what it was
Rating: 4/5
This one probably ranks unfairly high due to nostalgia, but this stuff really is designed to be enjoyed on a hot summer day in Nara.  It's Japan's answer to Mountain dew, but is unfortunately  much less common and honestly not as good.  Again, it oges flat fast and the second that fizz is gone, Sweet Kiss basically defines the expression sugar-water, one shuddering, sphincter-clenching swig at a time.

The Final Fantasy Collection
There is no more ample metaphor for the modern Final Fantasy series than their soft drink line: saccharine, shockingly unsatisfying, and absolutely nothing you haven't already had before a million times.  Also it's really expensive ($2 a can).
Dissidia Potion
Potion hit the shelves during the hype leading up to Dissidia's release and was almost criminally collectible.  If you've never played it, Dissidia is Square's PSP Final Fantasy fighting game featuring the chief protagonist and antagonist of many of the first ten "numbered" FF games.  And with 16 characters came 16 can designs, of which I got three.  Two for Terra and Kefka from Final Fantasy 3/6, and one of Squall as a gift from a co-worker who apparently thought I was either retarded or gay.
Rating: 2/5
Potion tastes purple.  There's no other way to describe it.  It's carbonated purple stuff from the Sunny D commercials.

Final Fantasy XIII Elixir
This one was released in the hype leading up to Square's third motion picture, "Final Fantasy XIII," which was released exclusively for the PS3 and XBOX360.  I bought one of afro guy because afro guy.
Rating: 2/5
Quick Japanese vocabulary lesson: In America, "cider" is pulpy apple juice that it's okay to get drunk on in front of your kids.  In Japan, "cider" is kind of their equivalent to Sprite or 7UP, minus the lemon-lime flavor.  There are many, many, many different brands of the stuff and it all tastes the same, which is to say it all tastes like Elixir.  Totally unremarkable, and honestly a step down in effort from its predecessors, so I'm going to subtract one point for laziness, bringing the score down to a 1/5.  But I'll add a point, since it's such an apt metaphor for FF13, bringing it back up to 2/5.  Fun fact: despite having been released more than a year ago, Elixir is still collecting dust on store shelves.  They seriously can't get rid of the stuff.

Dragon Quest Slime
I honestly bought this stuff just for the bottle.  and then I found out that the sweet design was just a cheap plastic sleeve and felt totally ripped off, paying a whopping three bucks for a paltry amount of beverage, making this the most expensive drink on the list by a fair margin ($3 a bottle).


Rating: 2/5
Let it not be said that there is no truth in advertising.  DQ Slime is exactly what the name implies: a thick, syrupy goop that tastes like you ran through the set of Ghostbusters with your mouth open.  If you work in food service and the boss tells you to despise of an expired bag of Sprite syrup, and you cant bring yourself to waste it, you too can taste Dragon Quest Slime by mixing equal parts syrup and tap water.  Just make sure you have someone on hand with an insulin shot ready.

Green Cola
Score another one for truth in advertising.  An amber cola with a greenish tint, supposedly due to the addition of ginseng, but more likely due to an abundance of food coloring and nothing better to do with it.
Rating: 3/5
About as average as they come.  It's just your run-of-the mill cola with a dash of ginseng.

CC Lemon
YES.  Being a foreigner in the summertime in Japan can be difficult.  For one thing, your scrotum leaks salt water like James Cameron's "Titanic" on rewind, and worse still, lemonade, as Americans understand it, never really caught on.  CC Lemon is a radiant lighthouse of hope in a sea of ballsweat.
Rating: 4/5
CC Lemon boasts 70 lemons worth of vitamin C in a 500 mL bottle, but who gives a shit unless you're in the British Navy circa 1600.  What really matters is that this stuff is good.  It's just like carbonated lemonade.  Sweet and sour, CC Lemon somehow strikes the balance that no Chinese restaurant ever could, and contains a lot fewer rat droppings.

Fanta
There's no way to even begin to do justice to the Fanta catalog in this one single update, so just believe me when I say that Fanta's soft drink line has many, many, many entries--and they're all good.  Except...
Fanta FunMix
I imagine this ill-conceived amalgamation had an origin story similar to Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, but with much less pleasing results.  Everything about this is an eyesore, from the clearly amphetamine-bender inspired bottle art to the broken-toilet-in-the-busiest-station-in-Tokyo color of the beverage itself.
Rating: 2/5
This stuff's a mess, and it's nothing you haven't already tasted a thous times filling your Big Gulp in a moment of 8-year-old eclecticism.  What a disappointment.

Mets
"Beisbol been bery bery good to me."  If you get that, by the way, leave a comment.  Mets is the little drink that could.  Whereas other drinks on this list, like Skal Ramune and Sweet Kiss, were better in hindsight because of my change in personal taste, Mets used to be better because of a change in volume.  During the summer of 2008, Mets could no longer be bought in the standard 355 mL can, but instead could only be found in a stubby 250 mL bottle-can, possibly due to the global saddening efforts of the evil Dr. Mopey.


Rating: 5/5 4/5
Dr. Mopey: Get in here, Moodswing, I need you!
Moodswing: Yes, Your Depressedness?
Dr. Mopey: Operation: Melted Ice Cream Cone is going perfectly, but there's still far too much joy in the world.  At this rate I'll never darken all eight Pearls of Hope.
Moodswing: B-b-but, Dr. Mopey, picnic rainouts are up 23%, and there's bean a steady increase in lonely-puppy dogs in pet store windows!  Our Grief-goons are out picking daisy petals to "he loves me not" status 'round-the-clock!
Dr. Mopey: It's not enough, Moodswing.  We need something more.  Something truly upsetting, like the time the scrappy hometown heroes lost the big game to the rich, well-organized team from up-town.
Moodswing: But sir, Sunnygrove High doesn't play Winthrop Manner Prep ever since the school system re-districted.
Dr. Mopey: I know that, you numbskull, it was an example!  But I have a plan.  Look through the crystal ball.
Moodswing: The Sore-Eye Scry?  But why?
Dr. Mopey: Look at him, Moodswing.  Look at that blissful smile as he sips that grapefruity nectar from the green-and-yellow can, partaking of that refreshing crispness, perfectly balanced to be not-too-sweet, but with a hint of citrusy tang.  Look at him.  Like he doesn't even live in a world of kittens with bandaged paws, or where Ms. Smiley's Fudge Shoppe isn't three weeks away from foreclosure.
Moodswing: Turn it off, Vile Prince of Prozac!  Turn it off!  Haunt me with these blissful visions no longer!
Dr. Mopey: Rob him of that joy, Moodswing.  Shrink his distraction from this world of scraped knees and spilled milk.  If you need me, I'll be meditating in the Gloom Room.
Moodswing: One question, Your Glowership, how much should the smaller size cost?  Should there be a discount?
Dr. Mopey: No, Moodswing.  Charge him the same.

Mets Wild Charge:
Here it is, and I saved the worst for last.  As though Mets couldn't get any more patently offensive or any more clearly in cahoots with the League of Extraordinary Grumpymen, they heaped on the last final straw and then seventeen more bales upon the back of some poor farmer boy's lovable old camel, probably with some cute name like "Humperdink," crushing it pitifully and forcing Ma to sell the family farm to make room for a new parking lot for Winthrop Manner's Seal Clubbery.
Rating: -50/5
This stuff is so bad, I could barely finish a third of it.  Following the mets de-bottle of '08, we though the worst was over.  For two grueling years, we endured the outrageous prices, and it finally looked like all that hardship would mean something when a reasonably priced 500mL Mets product bearing the subtitle "Wild Charge" hit store shelves a couple months ago.  Little did we realize the subtitle was referring to the haste with which you make for the bathroom after your first swig.  It's like bobbing for grapefruits in a citrus farm's outhouse.  As if the revolting, powdered grapefruit compound mixed with sugar-water flavor wasn't bad enough, it's artificial sugar-water, thanks to the 0-calorie guarantee on the label.  This stuff hits your tongue like a freight train full of lemon-scent Pine-Sol and despair.  Truly, truly a convincing argument against both the existence of a loving god and justice.  An abomination of everything pure and good and decent in the world, Mets Wild Charge is the Anakin Skywalker of the soft drink universe.  The Attack of the Clones Anakin.  It is a horrible, horrible, horrible product.

Definitely pick some up if you're ever in the 'Pan.

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