Categories
Drinks

Starbucks launches “kyan coffee” (Canned coffee 缶コーヒー) in Japan

Canned coffee ( 缶コーヒー 「キャンコーヒー, kyan kohi」) is a Japanese invention developed at the end of the sixties by the company UCC. Nowadays the canned coffee industry in Japan is huge, there are dozens of companies competing, the most well-known ones are Coca-Cola Japan (Georgia brand), Kirin, UCC, Boss and Nescafe. Last week Starbucks Japan launched their canned coffee version for the Japanese market. Today I found it for the first time on the nearest convenience store from my home, it is slightly more expensive than the competitors:

cafe
Details at the
starbucks japan site

Canned coffee can be found almost anywhere in Japan, in supermarkets, at convenience stores (コンビニ kombini) or inside vending machines. This is how the canned coffee area usually looks like in a convenience store, all kinds of flavours :

cafe5 cafe6

cafe2

I don’t specially like canned coffee but I love the feeling of getting a hot can from a vending machine in winter when I’m walking in a very cold place. Can you imagine walking under the snow in a far a away street with not shops nearby and finding a vending machine with hot drinks? It’s like finding paradise 🙂

cafe3cafe4

These last two cans are from a limited version that UCC made in collaboration with Evangelion. I tried to collect all of them but I failed!

Categories
Drinks

Flying Fish Soup Vending Machine

Sergio Lorenzi sends me these photos of a vending machine he found in Nagoya with flying fishes inside a bottle. The text say that the flying fishes have been grilled and are ideal to use as a soup (dashi) to give flavour to udon, nabe, oden or any other slow cooked recipe.

Each bottle, in addition to a flying fish, also has some konbu 昆布 algae, one of the essential ingredients to be able to obtain the umami flavor when cooking.

flying fish soup
The ones on the top left side contain only algae and are cheaper than those that include also a flying fish.

flying fish soup

Other posts about vending machines in Japan:

Categories
Drinks Traditional

Water Offerings in Meiji Jingu

In Meiji Jingu there’s always a lot of barrels donated as an offering by many distilleries around the country. The funny thing is that last weekend I also found water bottles as offerings. In addition to being a donation to the Shintoist shrine, they are useful so that the kami-gods bring good luck and good business to the water bottlers.

Water bottles in Meiji Jingu

Water bottles in Meiji Jingu

Water bottles in Meiji Jingu

Water bottles in Meiji Jingu
Alcoholic beverages offerings

Water bottles in Meiji Jingu
Other offerings