This drink is drunk during new year’s to celebrate the coming of a new phase and is especially popular in the Kansai region. The sake is infused with spices and it’s said to signify flushing away previous year’s bad luck and to aspire to live a long life. According to Japanese folklore, a person who drinks Toso will prevent his family members from falling ill.

Toso is made by combining several medicinal herbs to form tososan (屠蘇散, tososan), a spicy mixture, which is then soaked in sake or mirin. If made with mirin, essentially a sweet sake, it is suitable for drinking, but using fermented mirin seasoning would not be appropriate as it is too salty.

Three sizes of cup, called sakazuki (盃, sakazuki?), are used starting with the smallest, and passed round with each family member or guest taking a sip. Drinking rituals differ by region, but in formal situations would proceed from youngest to eldest. This tradition originated in China whereby the young effectively test the drink for toxins. However in Japan, around the beginning of the Meiji or Shōwa periods, custom changed and the head of the household usually takes the first drink.

The tradition of drinking toso at the New Year began in the Tang Dynasty in China, and was adopted by Japanese aristocrats during the Heian period. The first cup drunk would be made with tososan, and the second and third cups with different varieties called byakusan and toshōsan.

The drinking ceremony finally passed to the general public and doctors would give out tososan. Even today some chemists shops have retained the custom and give tososan away as a free gift at the end of the year.

The custom is now mainly limited to Kansai and west Japan; in other regions celebratory o-toso at New Year is often plain sake without tososan.

At first glance, i thought the name was very Thai like. But instead, this Japanese gassy alcoholic drink has been around for a while now. I believe you won’t be able to miss it. It’s cans’ design look like an energy drink. Flavors comes with lime, grapefruit, apple, orange, pineapple, grape, kiwi, ume (plum), yuzu and peach. It’s mostly sold in restaurants and bar.

I thought they could have a better packing really. Oh well.

I got wind about cucumber flavored pepsi out in Japan recently. I am quite curious about it. Will someone be nice enough to send me a sample of the Cucumber flavored Pepsi all the way to the northern hemisphere?? :P

I like cucumbers and I can imagine the flavors going quite well with other savory food. Oh and thanks Billy for pointing it out the cucumber pepsi and octupus ice cream :D He said the cucumber flavored pepsi goes very well with the Umeboshi pickles. What an interesting thing. You guys need to try it out and let me know how it goes.

How many times have you seen TV Game shows in Japan where they punish their losing participants by drink this nasty green looking drinks? Maybe they don’t do it as much now but earlier in the years - they did. I myself saw a few videos of them drinking that nasty thing.

That drink is none other than the beneficial and healthy vegetable drink called Aojiru. It’s made from Kale mostly, which is why the color is dark green. The drink is also known as green drink or green juice in English, a direct translation of the Japanese meaning. (In modern Japanese, the character 青 ao means “blue”, but it is commonly still used in older contexts to refer to green vegetation.)

Aojiru was developed in October 1943 by Dr. Niro Endo (遠藤仁郎, Endō Nirō), an army doctor who experimented with juices extracted from the discarded leaves of various vegetables in an attempt to supplement his family’s meager wartime diet. He credited the cure of his son from pneumonia and of his wife from nephritis to aojiru, and in 1949 concluded that kale was the best ingredient for his juice.

Aojiru was popularized in 1983 by Q’SAI (キューサイ, Q’SAI), who started marketing 100% kale aojiru in powdered form as a dietary supplement, and sales boomed after 2000 when cosmetics giant Fancl started mass retailing of the juice. Today, many Japanese companies manufacture aojiru, usually using kale, young barley or komatsuna leaves as the base of the drink, and the size of the aojiru market was well over $500 million in 2005.

Apparently, new formulation of the drink is now decreasing the bitter greenish taste of the juice in bids to suit more consumer’s taste.

When I first saw this, i thought “I didn’t know the cereals came in drink form too”. Cheerio was a household favorite for a while in my home but the only form i know of is Cheerio the cereal, not Cheerio the drink.

Anyway, the similarities that these two share is uncanny in a way. Cheerios comes in a variety of color and this Japanese drink, Cheerio comes in a multitude of colors as well. The drink comes in multiple flavors, and was introduced in 1963. The drinks used to be sold in glass bottles, similar to those used for Ramune. In recent years, with the proliferation of steel and aluminum cans and PET bottles, Cheerio (grape and orange only) in glass bottles is only available in the Chūbu region south of Tokyo, as well as three vending units in Kanagawa Prefecture.

Has any of you tried Cheerio, the drink before?

Source: Wikipedia

WHoa…I love wasabi to bits but I didn’t know it existed in beer form :P I don’t really like beer …has anyone tried it? Is it spicy like that kick you get from eating wasabi paste?

You know, i think the japs should have a wasabi+soysauce beer…cos the flavors go so well together :P

I know the term weird is purely subjective so I am going to showcase a list of Japanese drinks that are weird to me:

1. Hoppy- Now, Hoppy is actually a beer flavored non alcoholic drink. If anyone’s tasted beer, it’s bitter aftertastes can make you feel like throwing up. I don’t know why anyone would want to have a non-alcoholic drink that tastes like beer? I thought ppl drink beer because it’s a cheap source of alcohol. But this drink sorta defies it purpose for me. But I suppose, it’s easier to accept that some peoople just like the taste of beer. The only beer that I can tolerate and actually like is Bud Light. I guess Hoppy is mainly a mixer drink - most commonly with Shōchū (a Japanese distilled alcoholic beverage).

2. Aojiru - I don’t know about you, i love my veggies but I don’t like drinking them. Green drinks that looks something out of the sewers just don’t appetize me much….:/ Aojiru is actually liquidfied kale that is very healthy for you. I suppose if I close my eyes, I’ll swallow it.

3. Calpis - This carbonated drink is milky. MILKY! The only time i tried something carbonated and milky, my stomach almost gave up on me. I did the coke and milk combo out of curiousity when I was a kid. I was a curious kid and curiousity almost killed me, i kid you not. This drink tastes like vanilla, so I supppose you can imagine vanilla coke and milk together. It might not be too bad I suppose but the gas and the milk just ugh…doesnt’ do it for me. I think it’s a weird drink because of it. Calpis gains a humorous connotation with English speakers because the name sounds like cow piss when spoken aloud. In Norwegian and Swedish the name sounds similar to ‘cold piss’. LOL.

I have three today. I’ll post moreif I can find more that I find weird. Maybe some of you might want to tell me your experience with these drinks. They may seem weird to me but to some of you out there, I am sure you have your happy stories to tell about them :) If you do, that is.

I have to run, i have to be off somewhere! See you guys next week!

Do you know what is the no. 1 drink in Japan? It’s beer, not sake. :P I was quite shocked, I always thought it’d be sake because growing up I was taught to think that sake is synonymous to Japanese food and beer is mainly a westerner’s thing - think Budweiser. But anyway, sake is the second preferred drink after beer and I am going to talk about it :)

Sake is actually made out of fermented rice. Now, if any of your have ever seen rice that has gone bad, you’d wonder how that could turn into sake because it is as disgusting as it smells. Ugh. Another name for sake is called nihonshu, which basically translate to Japanese wine. Sake is widely referred to in English as “rice wine”. However, this designation is not accurate. The production of alcoholic beverages by multiple fermentation is more characteristic of beer than wine. Also, there are other beverages known as “rice wine” that are significantly different from nihonshu.

Sake is a clear liquid and has about 15% alcohol in it. It is made from rice and water. Water is very important to make good sake and that means the type of water is important too. Water that is heavy with minerals might give a different taste to the sake so it is definately preferably to use water that has the least minerals in it. Sake breweries in Japan are located near some of the best spring water in the world. After rice is washed, soaked, steamed and cooled, fermentation starts by adding koji rice.

Sake is served in a ceramic flask called tokkuri, and you pour sake into a small cup called o-choko and drink from it. It is polite to pour sake into each other’s cup when you are drinking with others. You always need to know whether your company’s cup is empty or not. (Check out Japanese etiquettes for dining). O-choko actually looks like those Chinese wine cups to me as well. Very interesting indeed. In fact one theory suggests that the brewing of rice first started in China, along the Yangtze River around 4800 BC and was subsequently exported to Japan. Another theory traces sake brewing back to 3rd century Japan with the advent of wet rice cultivation. The combination of water and rice lying around together would have resulted in molds and fermentation. Regardless, the first sake was called kuchikami no sake, (口噛みの酒) or “chewing-in-the-mouth sake,” and was made by people chewing rice, chestnuts, millet, acorn and spitting the mixture into a tub.

No matter what, I like chowing down sashimi with sake because it cleans off the fishy smell after and prepares me palate for the next piece of fish. But of course, I can’t be sipping sake after every bite unless I want to start dancing naked on the table…:P 15% is not THAT potent but it’s potent enough. The last time i tried sake, I was 16 at my uncle’s birthday dinner party and I didn’t really know that sake would be that potent since I kinda liked it. After about 6 O-chokos, the tatami mats were talking to me. I didn’t dance naked on the table though. The funny thing is when you’re drunk with sake, you don’t usually feel anything except being real light, up in the head. The feeling of bloatedness only hits you after a long while and it hits hard - which explains the puke smell in my dad’s car the day after. Sorry dad!

Anyway, read more about sake HERE.

Source: About.com;wikipedia.

Tea is the second most consumed liquid after water around the world. And in Japan, tea is a very important aspect in life. They even have a ceremony made just for making tea. THose of you who have been to a tea ceremony would see that the ceremony is a very special and spiritual thing.

There are many types of green teas;Chinese and Japanese. Today, we’re going to focus on the different types of Japanese green tea. Japanese green tea is called ocha or something called nihoncha. There are 9 different types of green teas in the Japanese culture. The tea used in tea ceremonies are called Matcha one of the higher quality teas and pricier too!

Here are the different types of teas that you might have encountered:

玉露 Gyokuro, (Jade Dew)
Selected from a grade of green tea known as Ten-cha (天茶), Gyokuro’s name refers to the pale green color of the infusion. The leaves are grown in the shade before harvest, which alters their flavor.

抹茶 Matcha (rubbed tea)
A high-quality powdered green tea used primarily in the tea ceremony. Matcha is also a popular flavour of ice cream and other sweets in Japan.

煎茶 Sencha (broiled tea)
A common green tea in Japan made from leaves that are exposed directly to sunlight.

玄米茶 Genmaicha (Popped-Rice tea)
bancha and genmai (roasted rice grain) blend.

冠茶 Kabusecha (covered tea)
kabusecha is sencha tea, the leaves of which have grown in the shade prior to harvest, although not for as long as Gyokuru. It has a more delicate flavor than Sencha.

番茶 Bancha (common tea)
Sencha harvested as a second-flush tea between summer and autumn. The leaves are larger than Sencha and the flavour is less full.

焙じ茶 Hōjicha (pan fried tea)
A roasted green tea

茎茶 Kukicha (stalk tea)
A tea made from stalks produced by harvesting one bud and three leaves.

玉緑茶 Tamaryokucha
A tea that has a tangy, berry-like taste, with a long almondy aftertaste and a deep aroma with tones of citrus, grass, and berries.

Teas are very healthy for you too - studies have shown that green tea contains antioxidants that can fight cancer. I’ve been a green tea drinker for years now… I find that having a cup of hot tea every morning, makes me feel refreshed and ready to start a new day.

Fancy a cuppa green tea, anyone? :)

Source: wikipedia

I haven’t tasted anything new recently, as far as weird junk food or junk drink is concerned. But it’s not a reason for you all to suffer from a lack of update in this column. Fortunately, the No Apologies! Press people have a page they call “Crazy Asian Drinks” in which they talk about …crazy asian drinks! And since many of them are from Japan, if you want to read someone else’s point of view on Ramune, Pocari Sweat, or Oranamin C, you might want to go and have a look in there. I am not totally convinced by their conclusions nor their choice of drinks to review, but it’s kinda fun anyway.