Drinking in Japan

I’m quite pleased with the selection of alcoholic drinks in Japan, their beer is really good and they have everything you would have at home.

The kind of drinking I’m not satisfied with in Japan is the kind of “stopping at a vending machine to get a drink when your thirsty” or “getting some nice soda to go with your food” drinking.

Japan doesn’t have Sprite, at all, and Sprite is totally my favorite soda. They have Coke but they use some other kind of sweetener here so it tastes like crap to be honest. So during my visit here I’ve been hunting for a Sprite replacement, someone must have thought of the idea to bring Sprite to Japan.

The closest I’ve gotten so far is this:

It was sprite with some lemony (or something) twist, pretty OK, but quite hard to find.

The most disgusting thing I’ve come across, that basically just tasted like dishwashing liquid was this:

Japanese people have a strange sense of taste
What I find most disturbing is their various Jelly drinks, like these:

The first one – the energy drink equivalent to one riceball tastes just lemon, but had a very strange and not good aftertaste of.. well, rice!
The jelly fanta tasted very good, but it feels just like drinking old milk that is so old that it has started to form lumps in it.

What I do like about the japanese assortment of drinks is this:

They have a huge selection of vitamin water, vitamin drinks, protein water, mineral water and kinds of shizzle like that. It’s pretty awesome, especially when I have a cold like this.

Another quick food/drink related notes:

I didn’t know Coca Cola made bottled water, but apparently they do, and in a couple of other countries. I LOHAS is usually the cheapest water you can buy too! I suppose that’s another good think about the selection, water is always available, but sometimes you want something with taste.

And while I’m whining, this is something that really bothers me:

They individually wrap everything here, this is a single piece of gum from a well-packaged packet of gum. The cheese we buy, every single slice is individually wrapped with plastic. Japan seems very environmentally friendly and you see commercials everywhere with how “green” everything is and they sort all their garbage very carefully, to see that they waste so much packaging material is just weird.