Japanese Soft Drinks

With all the vending machines in Japan you may think they are full of Coca Cola, but no you will rarely see Coke instead you will see an array of interesting and sometimes unusual beverages.

Overly sweet coffee drinks were introduced for the Tokyo Olympic Games in 1964 and have become very popular in fact Coke’s Georgia brand is Japan’s biggest selling drink behind Oi-Ocha Ito-en’s green tea and sports drink Aquarius, it is a cloudy / clear liquid which sometimes even has a seed or two in the bottle. Coca-cola have another popular soft drink called Qoo a orange or grape flavoured non carbonated beverage which is also popular through Asia and Germany.

One difference with Japanese drink vending machines to most in the rest of the world is they usually even serve hot drinks as well as cold from the same machine.

Some of the more popular and interesting drinks include the Sports Drink range there are several which are very popular including the oddly named Pocari Sweat which has a taste which although refreshing is a mixture between grapefruit, bubble gum and some unknown flavour.

Calpis Water is a similar drink but non carbonated. but Calpis also comes in a soda variety. Calpis is actually a milk based drink although you would never know, its ingredients include water, dry milk powder and lactic acid. It comes in several flavours including various fruits, there is even an alcoholic version called Calpis Bartime. CC Lemon is similar to the lemon drinks you will find outside Japan the packaging is quiet interesting on the front there is a label saying how many lemons of vitamin C are in the can or bottle, a 500ml one says 70, but the ingredients on the back says it contains anything from 0 to 50% of vitamin C…only in Japan.

There are several wheat grass and wheat germ based drinks plus a large assortment of soy and tea based drinks

Other popular coffee brands include Boss, Wonda and the strangely named Fire are all coffee drinks some served hot while others cold.

It is estimated over 300 new soft drink brands are released onto the Japanese consumer every year, the ones that fail can survive less than a month but some of the biggest sellers can producing over half a billion cans or bottle a year