Anime Diet

Yes. That's a pumpkin drinking pudding with a straw. He loves pudding.

I had heard about food fads and drink fads in Japan before I moved here. We see them on TV when they get really bizarre, we hear about them online when they get really weird, we see the reviews on Youtube. I’m sure a lot of you heard about Pepsi Ice Cucumber… and how it wasn’t really that good. Well seeing that I really, really love different drinks and especially the different drinks in Japan, I think I’m going to start doing reviews on Japanese drinks and drink fads.

And how incredibly annoying they are.

See, when I get hooked on something I’m not ready for it to go away until I’m tired of it. And when I find an instant favorite I expect it to stay around. This happened in America and Europe only occasionally, or at least as far as I can remember. (I signed the petition to bring back Crystal Pepsi) But in Japan… I can’t count on my hands how many different kinds of drinks I’ve fallen in love with that have just disappeared. One such thing is Suntory Gokuri Blood Orange.

When I arrived in Japan about 8 months ago, it had just hit the market. It was sold almost anywhere and I drank it every day. It was my favorite stuff ever. EVER. I had gotten blood orange juice before, but it was always really expensive. These were 100 yen each. A bargain.

And then, one day, disaster struck. My regular store had replaced them on the shelves. They were gone. Even though I saw them in vending machines every once and awhile, and dusty shelves in pharmacies (which I immediately bought a bunch of) they eventually dwindled down to nothing. I was sad. They eventually replaced them with Gokuri Sweet Lemon, which was OK. BUT! When I went to the local FamilyMart to buy one for a picture today… they were GONE! DISASTER! So like my Blood Orange, Sweet Lemon had gone the way of my other favorites…  Canada Dry Clear Muscat Soda, mint chocolate milk, and that apple tea that I had JUST DISCOVERED only to have it disappear two weeks later from all stores. There are many others… but it’s just too painful to talk about right now. I can only hope for the joy of finding them randomly in small mom and pop stores.

I haven’t been here long enough to tell what is seasonal. I don’t drink alcohol or that much coffee, so I can’t even imagine how frustrating those are. Other than a million different colors to dye Mountain Dew, America maybe gets a new drink every few months, if only a few times a year. Maybe I’m just so tied to brands that the American industry has trained me to have brand loyalty. Heck, I even stayed on the same kind of bottled water for years. I guess that’s why I can see how I feel that the Japanese beverage industry is toying with my brain. But you know what? I’m going to treat this like some sort of adventure. And I’m going to take you all for the ride. This is…. Japanese Drink Fads.

First subject: Pumpkin Pudding Latte

Ha ha ha! I'm drinking pudding in a glass!

Last week I was grabbing some chocolate milk for breakfast and I notice the striking box art on this. It really stood out amongst the lines of plain carton drinks. It was a pumpkin… drinking pudding. With a straw. How could I say no? Halloween isn’t as big in Japan as Christmas, but some seasonal decorations still spring about. And I guess this is the drink for the season. Now there’s one key word in this title: pudding. If you add pudding to ANYTHING in Japan, it’s going to be an instant best seller. in fact, this morning when I got to FamilyMart it no longer had one row, but THREE rows.

DOMINATION.

Don’t let the empty space on the sides fool you, when I went to pick one up last night to write this they were GONE. (Another scary moment.) Pudding in Japan is serious business. I had noticed that they were filling and emptying quite rapidly all week. In fact, when I picked up this one the lady standing next to me saw me buy it, and then put one in her basket. It could say Concrete Pudding and somebody would buy it. All that obsession you see about pudding in anime? It’s 100% true.

Now on to the taste. I’m a pumpkin maniac. I love anything pumpkin… bread, candy, pie, coffee… you name it. This is where it was a bit disappointing. It tasted about 90% pudding (Japanese pudding is more like custard.) 8% those spices in pumpkin bread, and 2% pumpkin. It’s about as thick as good chocolate milk. While not a total favorite, even if it was terrible that box art makes up for it. But it’s like liquid pudding, who can hate that? Well done. I will miss it when it goes the way of the short drink season.

I give it a 7/10. That’s official.

I’m excited about my next review. Pepsi is releasing a Sweet Azuki Bean Flavor. It comes out tomorrow and I’ll have the review up later this week hopefully.

HA HA HA! I just reviewed a beverage!