On our way to pick up the kids today, we stopped at the Japanese supermarket to pick up a few things. I was mainly after a set of bento boxes that I could put the children’s lunches into for school. One of my daily duties is making the children their lunch for school. I use far too many plastic baggies to do this, so the bento boxes will be good.
Of course, I took a look at the coffee section. The Japanese may not have invented coffee and iced coffee, but hey have done a damn good job of perfecting it. Here are a few cans I had not seen before.
Who can resist these cans? Not I. I especially like the ‘On Business’ can. Also, the ‘naked beans’ are in intriguing.
For a few months now, we’ve been drinking tea more in the morning, much more thatn coffee. In fact, Michele has placed the coffee maker in the cupboard and we only have an electric water kettle on the counter now. To get my coffee now, I have resorted to instant coffee. It’s not bad.
I picked up a bottle of Japanese instant coffee on a whim. I saw a bottle of UCC Taste No. 114. I’m a sucker for any food product with a graph on the package.
There is a coffee called Taste No. 117 and the graph somehow compares them on a two dimensional graph. I cannot read Japanese, so I wasn’t sure whether to buy 114 or 117. I decided that the red dot for No. 114 denoted danger and so, that meant it was the coffee for me.
I’ll find out tomorrow how it tastes.
Eventually when I visit Japan, I fear I will not sleep because all I want to do is drink Japanese coffee endlessly.
Instant coffee is not bad. It’s evil.
Agreed! Maybe you should try those coffee bags that you dip in your hot water. I imagine they are better than any powder based abberations.
It’s actually Traditional Chinese. On the y-axis it says bitterness. When y is positive it’s strong, when y is negative it’s weak. For the x-axis, it measures sourness (+/-), same scale.
Instant coffee and coffee bags are nasty.
But there is another way to get just one or two cups of coffee.
I’ll share it with you.
In this case, given that it is a Japanese can of go-juice, I would call it Kanji.
However, since Kanji is a Chinese import, Dave’s definition holds 🙂
BTW: UCC Instant coffee absolutely rulezors. But the above posters are right. Traditional American instant coffees are absolute crappo.
you know what the best dessert in the world is? Japanese COFFEE JELLO. yum. I ate it every day on vacay in Japan…
Coffee Jello sounds friggin AWSOME!
Is that Howard Hughes on the “On Business” can? Either way it is some killer packaging.
Reminds me of the canned coffee in one of the William Gibson books (All Tomorrows Parties maybe?) that self-heated. Those would be the greatest.
Thanks for the translation Dave!
I saw coffee jello at the store but didn’t buy it. Next time.
have you seen the cute lunches people make using the bento boxes?
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~msittig/bento/
i’ll bet your girls would totally love this
The graph is titled as “taste chart” in Japanese. Here’s what that means. As it goes up, there’s more bitter taste. As it goes right, more acidity.
About 6 years ago I bought a can of “Coffee Boss”. He put it on a high shelf–a place of respect. I note that they have retained the graphic, but changed the name to “Boss Coffee”. The can used to be all brown, too. We never drank it, but I would bow my head solemnly whenever entering his office. I did not respect him (although I like him), but I bow to the Coffee Boss. “Boss Coffee” sounds like something you could have overheard at a Norm’s on Hawthorne Blvd., circa 1975, in a conversation between Leif Garrett and Vince van Patten while Willie Ames was out parking the car.