Yet another iced coffee on the market for this summer. Nescafe introduces their “Shake” version of the little refreshing Java… First impression is very good, because the bottle is in glasse, it is fat, curvy, and totally shrinkwrapped. In other words, the complete opposite from what you usually see, especially in the canned coffee section. Because it is in glass, the bottle is also heavier, which usually is a good trick to make the consumer feel like it is a better quality product. But if you have read this column before, you know I just can’t resist a new food item when I see one in the convenience store, especially a new drink, let alone iced coffee.

Well, it’s not bad, but I don’t like it. To be honest, I’m glad I tried, but I don’t think I’ll buy it again. The shake thing is really cool. The milky coffee inside gets all frothy and pretty think, and when drunk very cold, the thinkness makes it very enjoyable — think melted ice cream. But the taste of the coffee (or is it the sweetener?) are not really satisfactory. I mean, it feels like home made but tastes like industrial. I wish I was in the tasting panel for this one, because that would have made a killing if the coffee taste was higher quality… Plus, again, it’s a glass bottle!

Found on an englishman in osaka (he’s english, he’s a man, and he’s in osaka): God comes from the Kilimanjaro and is available for 110 yen. I have never seen it, but it could be that God loves Osaka and hates Tokyo.

Has anyone tried this yet?

Meiji is entering the iced coffee arena just in time for Summer and they do it with a clever idea in mind. Instead of making a can with coffee in it just like everybody else, and instead of trying to cover up a really shitty fake coffee taste with some fake milk taste just like everybody else, they take the reversed the problem and approached it the other way around. What would you expect from a company who is famous for their milk? Their ice coffee is NOT iced coffee: it’s “milk and coffee“.

Even if you are craving for a short black, when getting canned coffee in Japan, from a convenience store or a vending machine, hot or cold, well, in every circumstances, NEVER get the ones without milk in them. There are a few available, true, but you should always resist. This is not coffee. It is everything and anything else, but it is not coffee. Not that the other kinds are coffee either, but at least the milk and sugar covers that really strange fake coffee taste and makes the whole experience bearable, sometimes even enjoyable and refreshing…

But that was before Meiji’s creative team pull that twist of their sleeve and introduced the “milk and coffee” concept, where milk is the drink and coffee is the flavour, not the opposite. So how does it taste? Milky and creamy, with a soft taste of coffee (and lotsa sugar as usual). It is fresh and soft, and does not leave that bitter aftertaste most canned coffee have. Good point there.

But there’s more. Canned coffee also have another inconvenient: cans. Sure, the sound when you open it is cool, and I am convinced some marketing people found out Japanese salarymen think it is more manly to drink out of a can rather than a pet bottle, but cans have an aluminium taste, and more importantly, once you opened one, you can’t close it. Pet bottle on the other hand are clean and soft and happy (you can tell I am biased, can’t you?). There are other iced coffee in pet bottles, but it is still not the norm though. Meiji stands out a little more with this packaging. Good point there too.

But there is still more! And the gadgets fans here will appreciate this one. The cap of the bottle has a strange little encarving at the top. and the telescopic straw is pointy on one side. That gives you two options to drink this coffee flavored milk. Either you open the bottle and drink just like with any bottle, or you punch the straw from the little pre-formed hole at the top and drink it through the cap. This is not the first drink which has such a cap, but this system is actually quite rare, and inexistant in the iced coffee range as far as I know. There are so many women who will choose this last option, to drink elegantly and not mess with their make up and their posture, it’s a genius marketing move from Meiji’s part. And a very obvious one too: a quick look at the bottle and you understand who it is targetted for. I am comfortable with my feminine side (one could even say I am a Tokyosexual, but that would be far fetched) and I know what I’m gonna drink this summer.

Now all they need to do is to get them in vending machines…

One of the meanest, hippest AND biggest advertising spots in Tokyo is the Q-Front building, in Shibuya crossing, just opposite the station. That’s where crowds of people come in regular flocks from the various trains and subway lines and wait to cross the street while looking at the ads and videoclips on the giant screens in front of them. Of course, apart from the screens, if you want 100% display time, you can put giant billboards on the side of the building. That is where Nintendo chose to advertise for the DS a while back. It is huge and you better have a lot of money and something really cool to announce if you want to display it here.

Of course, the first and second floor of the Q-Front building is already a big advertisement for Starbucks. They have their worldwide busiest shop there. And big green letters spelling it out for you in case you didn’t get it yet. Well, that was not enough for Starbucks this time: they had something to announce and they wanted to make it loud.

So, ?…

They made their catchcopy even shorter than the “world’s shortest catchcopy ever“. Shorter than anything. Yet, very big, and very appealing for anyone who drinks Starbucks.

So, if you understood so far, on May the 11th, something will be revealed and it is going to be big, and it is from Starbucks, but it is a surprise. Except it isn’t one really. Beacuse just outside the building, on the facade of Starbucks actually, there is a poster that announces the release of Frappuccino Light on May the 11th. So much for the teasing I guess…

If you don’t know about Frappuccino Light, it is a lighter version of the original Frappuccino, and it has been around in the US since June 2004. Apparently, it uses Splenda instead of sugar (can anyone confirm this?) and has 30-40 percent fewer calories than the original Frappuccino series.

What else can you do in the city with the busiest Starbucks, a whole lot of Starbucks competitors/wannabes who just rip off the logo and the drinks, and everything that comes between, millions of coffee drinkers who are always craving for something new and original, and a culture in which tea is a healthy beverage everyone should drink daily?

It’s easy once you have read the title of this post, but until now no one had thought of it. Well, Dama Teapresso has started their operations in Shinjuku now, and it wouldn’t be surprising that they start opening little corner shops everywhere soon.

Concept is simple. Dark over-infused black tea, foamed milk, and whatever Starbucks can add we can do it too. Caramel, whipped cream, whatever… Iced or hot. And you can also order normal tea and chai, but no coffee of course.

As far as taste is concerned, the tea is going through an espresso machine, but it tastes like normal tea which was left in the pot for too long. It tastes good, and it feels lighter than coffee, but if you want coffee, it won’t do. It is a taste that probably needs to get acquired. Very bitter, and kinda “adult”-taste, whatever that means. Just felt like that when i drank it.

The inside of the shop is like your usual coffee bar thingy, with the stainless steal sink, the little water tap always open to clean the utensils, little muffins next to the register etc.

The store is just outside Shinjuku station, which is the busiest station in the world as millions of commuters pass through it everyday. It is also a business neighborhood, a meeting point, and a shopping district with many department stores (including one just next to this tea shop). There is always people coming and going (and waiting) next to the shop, and as I was drinking my tea-capuccino, I just looked at all the people who stopped and checked the menu as they passed by. It seems everyone who comes across it feels “I should at least try it”. Have you? Will you? (If you love/hate it, leave a comment below with your experience.)

In Japan it is all about seasons. Summer comes and you get the ads for ice cream popping up. That’s quite normal. But drinks are also very seasonal, colors, smells etc. Pocari Sweat is usually drank when it’s hot outside and you sweat. Hence the name.

Talking of the name, a lot of people wonder about Japanese brands naming, and as you can imagine, Pocari Sweat is no exception. One theory is that Pocari is very close to the Japanese word “pokkari”, which has the meaning of “clouds floating in the sky.” The logo of Pocari Sweat is white letters on solid blue background, and the drink comes in summer when the sky is bright blue. Cheap and efficient marketing applied to the first word. And it works: look at the huge ad on Shibuya Station these days. It is bright, and blue, and the sky behind the girl is the same hue as the big brand label next to it. It is even more sky-like than the actual grey sky behind it. The message? Drink Pocari Sweat and it’s summer. Or the opposite…

Now, the second word: “Sweat”. That’s a bit trickier obviously. Pocari Sweat is usually drank in hot summer, or after sport, when you sweat. But according to a spokesperson at Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., the same company who does CalorieMate:

‘Pocari’ sounds relaxing, easeful, light to Japanese people. It dosen’t have any English meaning. ‘Sweat’ has the meaning of diligence and effort in Japanese.

This would imply that you don’t DRINK sweat, but rather you earned your drink WITH your sweat. Cultural difference I guess. To me, it sounds like something they tried to get meanings attached to afterwards. But it works nonetheless. Well, anyway, most people call it “Pocari” and drop the “Sweat”.

Official English-language homepage here.

You know spring is around the corner when iced tea commercials are popping out like cherry blossom, except everywhere at once. Kirin is going full gear these days, with both the “western style” tea (and the cute idol Aya Matsuura drinking loads of it), and the “Nama Cha” green tea ads on TV, big inflatable bottles in Shinjuku station, posters everywhere etc. But their tea is the same as last year’s, re-vamped a little. Hajime however is brand new and if you are a sucker for really new stuff that you have never seen before, you gotta fall for this one, and for its very cool logo. The kanji used for this logo is the chinese character for “One” (among other meanings), and if you look carefully, you will notice that it has a little (TM) attached to it. Hajime iced green tea has trademarked the word “ONE”, how smart!

Who else than a big US corporation could have done that? Don’t look very far, Coca Cola has been successfully making Tea and coffee in Japan for years, and they have just released “the ONE”… :)
In fact, although it is the same kanji, the word “Hajime” doesn’t mean “one” here, but rather, the “first”. Because, as it states on the ad, this tea is the first green tea, the one that tea harvesters like to drink the most. The freshest, newest, greenest tea in other words. The one that tea people like, and therefore the one that Coca Cola think you will like the most.

According to my Japanese sources, it tastes just like any other green tea on the market.

But the logo is cool…

A little while back, when exams preparations were at their peak, I noticed this coffee can in my convenience store. What caught my eye was the staring of the guy printed on the can. He seems to be angry, but he isn’t. He’s very awake and ready to fight. And written on the left side is “160mg of caffeine”, which is 30% more than the usual amount in canned coffees. This is the equivalent of Jolt Cola for the coffee world. I didn’t buy it, because I don’t have exams and I need to sleep 14 hours per day in order to be not-so-cranky all the time, but also because i said on the label that it has a “bitter and dry coffee taste” as it is usually the case with these type of power-oriented manly food items. But I am sure it sold very well at the time.