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:
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 :
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 🙂
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!