Japanese Foods-- nomimono

[prasantrin]

I'm drinking the new Pepsi Shiso as I type this and really like it. It is a hard to describe taste but it definitely has a shiso/herbal taste. My (American) nephew wanted to spit it out on the first sip as he didn't care for it at all.

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I'd spit it out, too. Shiso is definitely not one of my favourite flavours!

Re: Gokuri blood orange--in my 'hood it's available at Seijo Ishii. Maybe you'll find it there?? I think they have the peach one, too.

[torakris]

I'm drinking the new Pepsi Shiso as I type this and really like it. It is a hard to describe taste but it definitely has a shiso/herbal taste. My (American) nephew wanted to spit it out on the first sip as he didn't care for it at all.

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I'd spit it out, too. Shiso is definitely not one of my favourite flavours!

Re: Gokuri blood orange--in my 'hood it's available at Seijo Ishii. Maybe you'll find it there?? I think they have the peach one, too.

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Thanks! I hadn't seen the blood orange one around, I'll try to check Seijo Ishii this weekend.

[melonpan]

i dont know why americans arent as obsessed over new products the way the japanese seem to be so obsessed. there are new drinks every month. new tea, new fruit juice. new coffee drinks. they come and then disappear 3 months later, fleeting and ephemeral. always something interesting to try.

american beverage cases leave me cold and completely uninspired. always the same, pepsi, sprite, coke, maybe snapple.

i love the japanese beverage case.

[nuppe]

You make me miss Japanese soft drinks so... But what were the Japanese actually drinking before the beer, the dairy products and the soft drinks industry. Hot sake and hotter tea? I do not intend to turn this into tea or sake history.I just wonder what was common before. Basically tea? Did they drink water? Also in Edo?

[nakji]

Pepsi Shiso????? That's...really stretching for a new flavour, I think. I miss the seasonal changing of the Koiwai Farms drinks. The apple was great, and grape and orange were a mainstay, but then they also had peach, fruit punch, apricot, western pear...has anyone seen any new ones lately?

And don't even get me started on the good work done by the fine people of Kirin's World Kitchen drink division. The mascarpone coffee, the salt caramel latte....*sigh.

[prasantrin]

Koiwai junsui grapefruit is back, but I've found that I prefer Gokuri (it was a toss-up for a while).

Today I found Gokuri blood orange and lemon in Y100 vending machines today. No grapefruit, though. Before summer holidays I found a vending machine with Y100 Gokuri Grapefruit, and I bought 4 or 5 of them.

[Hiroyuki]

You make me miss Japanese soft drinks so... But what were the Japanese actually drinking before the beer, the dairy products and the soft drinks industry. Hot sake and hotter tea? I do not intend to turn this into tea or sake history.I just wonder what was common before. Basically tea? Did they drink water? Also in Edo?

nuppe!? Good to see you again!

As for alcoholic beverages, sake, shochu, and mirin (for women), boburoku (home-made, unrefined sake, now banned), etc.

As for non-algocholic beverages, mugicha (roasted barley tea, the oldest tea in Japan), green tea, hojicha (roasted green tea), etc.

Few Japanese drank milk before the Meiji period.

[Hiroyuki]

Sorry, not boburoku but doburoku. (Why do I keep making silly spelling mistakes? )

[nuppe]

Thank you, Hiroyuki, you're my saviour as so many times before! I get the impression that quite a lot of the old drinking was hot. Is it so?

Yes, a long time since I was here. Suppose I must have been somehwere else. Hope so:-) Now I actually consider a text about Mr. William Copeland, the Norwegian borne American who established the forerunner of Kirin. But there will be a lot of fog to cut through to understand his life and deeds. No matter what: so nice to see you are still here - and all the other as well!

[nuppe]

Barley tea? I thought barley was a new thing in Japan. Have you tasted it?

[Hiroyuki]

Thank you, Hiroyuki, you're my saviour as so many times before! I get the impression that quite a lot of the old drinking was hot. Is it so?

Yes, a long time since I was here. Suppose I must have been somehwere else. Hope so:-) Now I actually consider a text about Mr. William Copeland, the Norwegian borne American who established the forerunner of Kirin. But there will be a lot of fog to cut through to understand his life and deeds. No matter what: so nice to see you are still here - and all the other as well!

I wonder where you got that impression... Anyway, tea is usually supposed to be drunk hot anywhere, right?

As I said, barley tea is the oldest tea in Japan!

[nuppe]

Edited October 3, 2009 by nuppe (log)

[helenjp]

Can't confirm it, but it is possible that water or boiled water (called "sayu" or "white water") was the basic drink...green tea and barley tea were both of continental origin, and not much more than fashionable drinks for the wealthy back in the Heian period. On the other hand, Japan's water supplies have generally been cleaner than say the plains areas of China.

I can't help thinking that tea was a commercial crop rather than an everyday drink for farmers until late into the Edo period...Japan has a fair number of herbal teas, but possibly kaki-no-ha-cha (persimmon leaf tea) is the only one that was drunk as much for pleasure as for medicinal purposes (mainly because persimmon leaves are not hard to come by?).

[Hiroyuki]

As Helen says, Japan is rich in safe water.

Doburoku (unrefined sake) making is said as old as rice cultivation, as you can easily imagine.

According to this webpage (Japanese only), barley was introduced into Japan towards the end of the Jomon period, about 2,500 years ago. It also says that long before green tea become widespread, barley tea was drunk by feudal warlords, among others.

Sugita Genpaku, who is believed to be the first Japanese to drink beer, said one word when when he drank beer for the first time: Mazui (not good).

Hop was unknown to the Japanese, I suppose. I googled and found that hop was native to only some parts of Hokkaido.

Some common elements in the taste of beer and mugicha??

Beer is bitter, while mugicha isn't!

I think that besides persimmon leaf tea, other teas such as sugina (fertile shoots of horse tail) tea and dokudami tea were (and still are) popular. In fact, my parents used to make both teas.

[nuppe]

Thank you, both of you. And yes, I was right: this was the right place to go to get an understanding of this.

By the way; I suppose unclean water in the West must have been more of a problem in cities and some villages than in the countryside. Personally I drink water directly from creeks, rivers, lakes and springs several times every season. But not everywhere of course.

[torakris]

My new favorite drink.

Salty Lime from Kirin's Sekai no Kitchen kara series.

I'm drinking it as much as I can now because who knows when it is going to disappear.

[torakris]

I can't stand Pepsi Nex but I had to pick up 2 bottles when I saw these Dean and Deluca refrigerator magnets on the bottles.

There are 8 in the whole series.