Calpis Creamy Chocolate

Happy Valentine's Day, ladies and gents! Whether you love it or you hate it, today is a day singled out for the expression of love, and mostly romantic love, at that. In Japan, women give men chocolate and gifts on Valentine's Day, and it's reciprocated on March 14th, or "White Day."

But of course! What better way to say "I love you" than chocolate?

How about...

Calpis Creamy Chocolate!



Well, actually, how about no.

But we'll get to that.

First of all, I feel like most of us think of brown when we think of chocolate? White chocolate, after all, isn't even REAL chocolate, since it's missing those essential cocoa solids. So the fact that "Creamy Chocolate" looks like this:



...is disheartening. And we should actually take a minute now and talk about Calpis so you can understand why. A popular drink in Japan, Wikipedia offers "its ingredients include water, nonfat dry milk and lactic acid, and is produced by lactic acid fermentation." So it's a bit like yogurt, but either way, it's a dairy drink, so a mixed with chocolate, it could be good!

And it sure does have an unappealing name, huh? According to Quirky Japan, "the 'real story' is that Calpis is a compound of "Cal", short for calcium, (because milk is one of the main ingredients) and pis, short for 'sarupisu', a word describing one of the "five tastes" in Buddhism. It was chosen by the company's president, Kaiun Mishima, a music professor, and a Sanskrit expert. Apparently, 'pisu' was chosen over the 'piru' of 'sarupirumanda, the best of Buddhism's five tastes, because the music professor thought it sounded better."

So, with that out of the way, back to the beverage at hand and answer an important question: does it smell like chocolate?



Nope. Not hardly. At least, not any chocolate I've ever had, in Japan or otherwise.

In the spirit of Valentine's Day, Pillow has agreed to help out! Since, after all, what is a loved one for, if to sample potentially awful soft drinks with you?



Surprise! He didn't like it.

Well, now for the taste test...



...



I am so unwilling to do this.



So... um... well... huh.



That's, uh, a flavor, I guess. But I guess the question is... what flavor?



I have no idea!! Orange, maybe?? There's some citrus going on, but no chocolate!

So, I let Pillow try to suss it out.



...



He was not much help. But it was nice, not to suffer alone!



Packaging: B-
Bouquet: C-
Interpretation of theme: D
All-around Taste: D
Final grade: C-

So, I give Calpis Creamy Chocolate a pass. I probably wouldn't advise giving it to your loved ones, or your friends, or your coworkers. I haven't tried normal Calpis, but I have a sneaking suspicion it probably tastes a lot like that... which means I think I'm gonna opt out of that one, too.

Until next time,
-Sarah

PS: For those of you sharp-eyed readers, why yes, I am not wearing my traditional bathrobe! I figured I'd dress it up a bit and wear some silky pajamas instead. Y'know. For Valentine's Day and all.

Sapporo Melon Cream Soda

I'm going to start this post by saying I'm disappointed in you.

That's right.

Because... seriously, guys. Why would you EVER think a soda claiming to be "melon float" [and on that note, I am terribly sorry, because I went by the picture rather than the katakana and called it that in error. (It is actually メロンクリームソダ, or "melon cream soda")] would be good?

I... I just honestly do not know what to do with you.

But this blog is here for your entertainment, even at my expense.

So at long last... I cracked open...

Sapporo Melon Cream Soda



And there it is, in all its neon green glory. Let's take a closer look, shall we?



It appears to say... がぶ飲み -- gabunomi? According to Google Translate, this means "gulp". So the full title of this beverage is "Gulp Melon Cream Soda." I think "gulp" is pretty appropriate here, because it is what I did in fear when I tremulously approached this drink. But anyway, when you turn it around, there's something on the back!



Mission 2, you guys! ... Alright, I'll bite: what's the mission?



...

Apparently, you have to... cosplay with the soda??

WHAT.



Really, I'm not kidding - it says "No.1 コスプレーヤー！！" (kosupure-ya-) and then shows this guy posing with the soda and getting his picture taken. This is truly bizarre.

Uh, so, points for originality there, Melon Cream Soda... but I haven't even begun, have I? Time to crack it open... and it opens with a sad fizz that does not indicate anything good. I am scared. Time to sniff it.



It smells like sugared-up ramune. If you've ever smelled normal ramune, you know to make it smell any more like bubblegum would be pretty hard and so this is a smell that that's... uh... pretty intense.

I am so scared.

I am going to drink this.



...



...



AUUGHHHHH. It is SO BAD. How bad? I WANT TO WASH IT DOWN WITH PEPSI NEX. IT IS AWFUL.

I TOOK THESE PHOTOS LIKE TWENTY MINUTES AGO AND I CAN STILL TASTE IT.

AUGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

For those of you who were like, "oh, melon float, sounds utterly charming", I wish I could send you a bottle so you, too, can enjoy this. It's great!

No, I'm only kidding. I don't hate any of you enough to inflict MELON CREAM SODA on you. I'll just send it to my enemies and then go to jail for putting biowaste in the post.

Auugggghhh.



Packaging: A-
Bouquet: F
Interpretation of theme: F
All-around Taste: F-
Final grade: F

Sapporo's Gulp Melon Cream Soda gets high points for its extremely bizarre packaging, and bombs everything else so badly I wish there was a lower grade than F. Grrrrroooooossssss.

I'm gonna hope to high heavens that Suika Soda isn't as much as of a gastronomical disaster as this sugared up sewer sludge.

Forever in your service,
-Sarah

Asahi Green Cola

Alright! Welcome back to your regularly schedule program, folks. I realized I never mentioned that the photos are clickable for larger sizes. They're still not terribly good quality photos, but hey, if you wanna seem 'em bigger, go for it!

With that out of the way... After doing Red Ginger, it seems only right that, for my first review of the new year, I have selected...

Asahi Green Cola



As you may or may not be able to see on the label, Asahi Green Cola totes itself as being "for your natural life". Huh. While the name is written in a Coca-Cola-style typeface, the rest of the label sorta misses the mark. Nothing about this bottle immediately says "natural" "green" or "made with fruit". Oh, and it is made with fruit, because...



...a closer inspection reveals that "'Asahi Green Cola is made from selected raw materials derived from plants such as fruits, with cola's own dynamism and briskness."

Wait. "Such as fruits"? You don't say.

But really, wow. With a byline like that... how can you go wrong? Well, let's see how they did with cola's own dynamism.



Smells pretty cola-like. I'm okay with it so far. Let's see if it has that cola briskness.



...



"Brisk" is not the adjective I'd use to describe it. In fact, I'd describe it as bitterly sour; a sad attempt at cola "flavor" that misses the mark almost completely.



So I'm cappin' this one back up.



Ugh. I was kinda optimistic because I do enjoy Japan's take on cola beverages way more than American ones, perhaps due to the cane sugar rather than HFCS usage, and to be honest, the idea of a "natural" soda is pretty appealing. But either way, Green Cola failed it. It was pleasing to the palate for all of two seconds and then immediately went sour. Gross. At least there isn't too much of a lingering aftertaste.

Packaging: C+
Bouquet: B
Interpretation of theme: D
All-around Taste: D
Final grade: D

With its slightly inappropriate packaging and its terrible flavor, Green Cola gets poor marks in everything but the bouquet, which smells deceptively like any other cola out there. Good thing it wasn't any more expensive than a normal soda. I can't recommend this at all.

Next time: I've been promising and promising it, but I will finally crack open that Melon Float! (Am I actually scared of it? Maybe a little...)

See ya!
-Sarah

Second Post: Suntory Red Ginger!

Let's see... dinner? Check. Laundry? In the dryer! Vaccuuming? Ehh, tomorrow. Is there anything else I need to do...



...



Oh. Right! This blog.

I wanted to make this a weekly affair, but I'll tell you what: on Monday, I was not in any kinda state to do a cheerful blog entry. And then I just kinda forgot yesterday. SO. Hi guys! I asked y'all to choose which soda I did next, and the opinions were fast and furious here and on my LJ where I originally posted the review. But I'm not going to lie to you, that while it was pretty much a tie, my taste buds ultimately chose the winner. Heh!

You might know their whisky from Lost in Translation ("For relaxing time, make it... Suntory time"), but Suntory makes a lot of Japanese beverages, both alcoholic and otherwise. And they bring us today's offering...

Suntory Red Ginger!



At first glance, the bottle is pretty nice. It has a red and black lace theme going on, and that typography for the drink name is kinda exciting! So, let's get started, shall we?



It smells like... ginger ale.



And it tastes like...



Ginger ale, too! What the... what is "red" about this?? Does it go three times faster?! (Thanks, Ali, for taking me to task on the lack of a Char joke! I'm ashamed...) And now I'm RED WITH ANGERRRR! Well, okay, I don't actually feel enraged, just mildly cheated. I like ginger ale a lot, so I'm okay with it being sort of a sub-par Schweppes, but c'mon, Japan. You let me down.



Packaging: B+
Bouquet: B-
Interpretation of theme: D
All-around Taste: B
Final grade: B-

Suntory Red Ginger was kind of a let down. Sure, it's drinkable, and I don't really know what I was expecting "Red" Ginger to taste like, but it wasn't far enough from regular ginger ale to really warrant being seperate from it. Ah well.

Next week, Melon Float. We shall see how this goes.


BONUS ROUND!!

I've invited a co-writer, Jose of Ichi's XBox Gaming Reviews, because he's tried quite a few of the specialty Pepsi flavors in the past few years. I'm not a fan of Pepsi in its original flavor, so I'm very willing to let someone else drink those, haha!

However, he brought it to my attention that Pepsi NEX Zero is doing a promotion with Gundam and Be@rbrick! Now, If you don't know me outside of this blog, then you probably don't know that I am absolutely coo-coo bananas for Gundam. Of course, I'm talking original, Universal Century timeline Gundam (although I did love X and I will always have a soft, vunerable spot for Wing), not the more recent stuff... but fortunately for me, Japan often remembers how much it loves First Gundam too. Last year was the 30th anniversary, and I went nuuuuts.

Anyway, back to this promotion: each bottle of Pepsi NEX Zero comes with one of 16 possible Gundam Be@rbricks. I went to one of the local 7-11s and saw that they had a huge selection, but someone had STOLEN the Char Aznable Be@rbrick from its package and just left it there. WHAT. What kind of jerk does that! I was pretty cheesed off. So I dug through the sodas (not a small feat, but fortunately, I have small hands, haha) and got a GM.



Now, I would have gotten more, but I was totally out of yen and also, Pepsi NEX Zero...



...sucks. I hate Splenda and its ilk, so "sugar free" versions of things and I don't get along. So now I have a bottle of Pepsi NEX Zero just sittin' in my fridge and I'll try to find someone to give it to so it doesn't go to waste, but still. Ew.

Alright, that's all for now. Until next time!
-Sarah