Kirin Salty Lychee Drink (product information)

Kirin is doing some sort of promotion in which they talk about the combination of fruit and salt. I am very aware that salt can do a lot of things for various dishes, including boost the sweetness level of various types of fruit (watermelon in particular) as well as add complexity to chocolate and other types of sweets. However, for me, adding salt to a beverage with a sweet base turns it into something resembling an isotonic drink (like Gatorade). This is not what I sign up for when I buy a (hopefully) refreshing bottle beverage.

The inspiration for this is supposed to come from Thailand where pickled lychee beverages with salt are supposed to be a mother-made tradition. I get that information from Kirin, so I don't know if it is true. At any rate, each bottle apparently has a tiny little mother preparing a drink in a miniature kitchen for you so there must be some truth to it.

Kirin recommends some "recipes" if you buy this elixir. They say you can ice it up and crush a bit of mint into it, make ice cubes out of it and eat them, or mix them with seasonal frozen fruit to make a "punch". To me, no matter how you mix it, this has disaster written all over it, but then I'm not one for salty beverages.

Kirin's April Fool's Day Prank (promotion information)

I've mentioned in my other blog that the Japanese don't do April Fool's day and I was always immensely grateful for that. It's not that I don't appreciate a clever joke. In fact, I very much appreciate one. It's just that April Fool's jokes are rarely clever. They are often mean-spirited, childish, and lacking in true imagination. Mostly, they play on making your victim look like a fool after trusting you rather than being creative and amusing everyone with your ingenuity.

This past April Fool's Day, there were two jokes that I appreciated. One was the Lil Bub video which was very nicely constructed to make it appear that there are actually two of these adorable cats with dwarfism and the other is the Kirin April Fool's advertisement promoting a 1 ml. can of beer. I appreciate these jokes because they take effort and they provoke a smile rather than embarrassment. While I do like the ad (shown above), I also hope this isn't the start of a wider trend in Japan. 

Random Picture #123

Last year, when energy conservation measures were first implemented to help compensate for losing nuclear power, Kirin introduced beer that you could put ice in. My husband wanted to try it, but never got around to it and it vanished from the mark. As a teetotaler (a status which amused some of my students, especially a few of the men, to no end), I'm not really sure why beer shouldn't have ice in it. I figured it smells horrible no matter what you do with it and you couldn't water it down enough to make me want to drink it. All I can say is that it must have been a fairly decent product for Kirin since it's back again this summer.

If any beer drinkers out there would like to leave a comment and let me know why ice doesn't go in beer, I'd love to understand. 

Random Picture #111

There were many perfectly reasonable and innocent word combinations in Japan which, because of different cultural connotations, were funny to native speakers. These cans of jasmine tea, sold without milk or sugar, and marketed as "Asian Straight" would be fine if it weren't for the fact that it makes it sound like they are marketing heterosexuals of Asian origin. When I saw things like this, after the initial smile of amusement, I was reminded of the complexities of gaining true fluency in a language. The nuances and the fluidity of pop cultural references make it nearly impossible. It was good for a laugh, of course, but also a moment of empathy. No wonder my students never felt their English would be adequate. If a huge corporation like Kirin was tagging their products in a slightly funny way when they used English, what hope did my students with their limited resources to get their English perfect have?

Kirin Nuda Cooling Grapefruit

You have to admire Kirin's testicular fortitude and not because they named this drink "Nuda". Using anything that implies nudity actually takes no balls whatsoever because even a hint of sex sells more products. No, I think it's pretty gutsy of them to sell a "cooling" beverage in the winter time in a country where most of the people (especially the women) have the heat-retention capacity of those in the reptile family. The last thing people in Japan want when the temperature drops below 82 degrees F. (28 degrees C.) is anything which is "cooling".

The Nuda brand has been around for awhile, but this is my first sampling of it. I like grapefruit flavored food and drink, but not actual grapefruit. Oh, I have tried to get into eating the real deal but I just never saw the point in smothering something in sugar in order to make it palatable. I figure that, if I'm going to go for a large amount of sugar, I might as well eat a donut and stop fooling myself into thinking I'm eating something healthy because it was plucked from a vine before being saturation bombed with sucrose.

The  point of the "Nuda" line has nothing to do with supple naked bodies but rather with offering up light refreshment with bubbles. The basic "Nuda" is clear sparkling water and this is the same with a hint of grapefruit flavor. I found it for 87 yen ($1.06) at Seiyu supermarket. The question wasn't going to be about how well this bowled me over but rather about how they worked with the grapefruit flavor. Since this is just a flavored sparkling water, one can't expect too much.

When you unscrew the cap, you can smell a light grapefruit flavor. The water itself is carbonated adequately. You can really sense the bubbles if you hold it in your mouth for a few seconds before swallowing. I rather like this because I like the burn you can get from carbonated beverages. The grapefruit flavor is just enough to be detectable, but not enough to overwhelm. It is quite a good balance because the flavor is there, but there's absolutely no bitterness.

Kirin recommends their sparkling waters as office refreshment. Their ads hint that this will perk you up in meetings, brainstorming sessions, etc. I think that's expecting a bit too much from carbonated water. Nonetheless, this is good sparkling water and if you are inclined to go with bottled water, this is no more expensive than plain water and a nicer experience. I'd certainly buy it again if I were out and about and wanted some water and if it were available and it definitely beats club soda, which has always had a funky taste to me.

Random Weekend Picture 15

My husband and I went out last weekend in search of an available iPad (for him, not me) with no success, but I did catch this ad on the train (you can click this image for a bigger one). The three hands holding the cans are on springs and float above the poster. They jiggle constantly while the train is moving. "Fire" brands of canned coffee are made by Kirin, which is better known for its beer. The current promotional campaigns use baseball player Hideki Matsui to promote their coffee. Much canned coffee in Japan is sold cold in vending machines.

The idea of cold coffee was a peculiar one 20 years ago when I first arrived. Since the proliferation of designer coffee houses (like Starbucks) have made cold coffee much more common in America, the only thing remarkable about these canned coffees (besides the fact that they have jelly in them) is that they taste so bad but still sell well.

Kirin Diabolo Ginger Soda

I have a feeling that a lot of the soft drink industry in Japan is driven by the desire of alcoholic beverage makers to make mixers. Very often when I try something off the beaten path, that means non-cola-based, it is too strong and seems designed to be diluted with something.

I picked up this Diabolo Ginger because the name sounded demonic. I didn't realize that this is actually pretty far away from anything sinister. It's rather sophisticated as the ginger preparation method and origin is in Provence, France (ginger diavolo). This beverage is part of Kirin's "kitchens of the world" promotion. As part of the method for this type of drink in France, sugar is boiled with ginger and honey-pickled lemon. Cinnamon and lemongrass are also used as part of the preparation.

In Japan, the preparation appears to be rather different. They use grapefruit juice and marigold. There is no cinnamon and the lemon has no honey notes. The grapefruit seems to accentuate the ginger flavor a lot. It's extremely strong. It reminds me of the smell I get when I grate fresh ginger root and the juice runs off. It's far too intense to be drunk straight.

The bottle contains 410 ml. of soda and was 147 yen at an AM/PM convenience store. It has plenty of sugar in it. The entire bottle will set you back 148 calories, not that I think most sober people can drink it all at one go. I couldn't get a decent shot of the drink poured into a glass, but it's nothing exciting. It is just cloudy, white liquid which looks like washed out lemonade.

I wouldn't buy this again because it is just too strong and not worth the calories or the cost. It's not that it's bad, really, it just feels a lot like drinking medicine at its current intensity.

Kiri and Stick Cream Cheese Snack

I usually don't check the origin of the snacks that I buy as long as the writing on the package is in Japanese. I figure that it being marketed in Japan qualifies it for review status in this blog. That being said, I probably should have realized that this is an import from France because of the French flag on the box. I guess the fact that I picked it up impulsively from the refrigerator case at the local 100 yen shop kept me from paying too much attention.


Kiri cream cheese is marketed in Japan by a company named Bel, which obviously must be French in origin. They market some of the best cheese products that we can find in Japan including Boursin, Babybel (which I never see locally), and Laughing Cow cheeses. I rarely buy any of these products because they're on the expensive side and I'm not big on softer, less flavorful cheeses. If I have a choice, I'll choose something with a harsher edge like cheddar. That being said, we'd buy Boursin all of the time if it didn't cost a fortune for a small quantity.


I decided to pick up this little snack pack because it seemed like a good opportunity to have something more nutritious and filling in a handy package. For only 100 yen ($1.10) and at only 108 calories, it seemed like good value. There are 8 bread sticks (6 cm./2.4 in.) and 25 grams (.88 oz.) of soft cream cheese. The portion of cream cheese to bread stick is perfect. You can scoop up a generous amount of the cream cheese on each stick and not run out.

The bread sticks are very crisp and fresh, but quite bland. They're definitely well-made, European-style bread sticks. The packaging does a great job of making sure they don't draw in moisture from the cream cheese side. The cream cheese is soft even when very cold and has the right amount of savory cheese flavor for cream cheese. I give it points for not being flavorless and bland as some cream cheese in Japan can be.

I really liked this and would definitely buy it again as a higher nutrition alternative to junkier snacks. There are 3.2 grams of protein in this and 3.5 grams of Calcium. I'd give this a "very happy" rating if it were a little more exciting. I'd love to see a similar thing with Boursin or flavored cream cheese.

Kiri is currently doing a Pokemon download promotion. You can download desktop pictures here by clicking on the orange buttons with "A" and "B" on them ("B" is cuter than "A", in my opinion). The other downloads are various .pdf files.

Kirin Cola Shock

Wouldn't it be cool if "Cola Shock" involved actual shocking? I'm not talking about a cattle prod to the tongue or anything, but just enough of a juicy jolt to wake you up at the end of a long, hard day.

Unfortunately, there is no actual shocking of any kind involved in Kirin's Shock. And when I say none at all, I mean it. Kirin could be sued for false advertising if it operated in a country where that sort of thing happened. As it is, the Japanese are not litigious sorts, so Kirin can imply any sort of experience they like through misleading naming and there's not a damn thing we can do about it.


I do not drink alcohol of any sort, so you can thank my husband for the existence of this review. He came across this at the local 100 yen shop for about 100-150 yen ($1.05-$1.44), but he can't remember exactly. As an impulse buyer who doesn't write a snack blog, keeping costs in mind is not really a priority for him.

I did a sniff and sip of this just because I'm writing the review and I felt obliged to do so. If you knew how much I hate the smell and taste of most booze, you'd know I made a supreme sacrifice. When I opened the can, I got a strong scent of nondescript booziness. After pouring it into a glass and sniffing it, I mainly smelled the familiar bouquet of cheap cola drinks. I'm talking about the store brand stuff that no one likes and parents buy for kids who haven't yet developed a refined cola palate.

The taste was horrible to my tongue. It tasted like cola-flavored cough medicine. It seemed like someone mixed too strong cola syrup with some sort of alcohol and didn't carbonate it very much. This was decidedly on the flat side and I strongly prefer very bubbly drinks. However, to get a more reasonable sense of how tasty this was, I went with my husband's response. When I asked him if he'd buy it again, he laughed and said, "not even close." Even though he has drunk rum and Coke, wine, and beer and enjoyed them, he really didn't care for this. He said he couldn't taste the alcohol very much and it simply tasted like bad cola to him.

This is pretty terrible, and at 5% alcohol, it's not going to buzz you more than beer. It's also 224 calories per can which could be spent on something far more enjoyable. Obviously, I wouldn't recommend this because the only "shock" is that it's so awful.

As a side note, several bloggers who have seen this in shops and advertised in public spaces have done some hand-wringing about this in terms of marketing to minors. It clearly says on the can (in the sizable black box you can see on the picture above) that you must be 20 or older to buy this. In fact, it says it in two places and has the characters for "o-sake" (alcohol) on it in the white circle. Add to that the fact that many markets that sell alcoholic beverages have an alarm on the register which tells the check-out person when someone buys this sort of thing that they can't sell it to anyone under 20 and you can see that there's no attempt being made to trick people into thinking this is a soft drink.

And another note, Kirin has desktop pictures of their ads featuring a Japanese babe. If you're into that sort of thing, you can download the pictures here. One interesting point about these pictures is that I had to say that I was 20 or older to even gain access to the wallpapers. Kirin is clearly being careful, even if they are selling a horrible drink, so they deserve props for that.