Thanks to the combined efforts of Richard and Rafael, I have several limited-edition Japanese beverages in the fridge. I’ll write a brief review of each as I consume them.
First up is Coca-Cola flavored with green tea:
This is kind of weird by American standards but makes some amount of sense in Japan. Green tea is both the national beverage of choice and seemingly the flavor of choice. Green tea ice cream is famous and not particularly uncommon in the US, but while in Japan I’ve had things like green tea donuts and green tea Kit-kats. Combining green tea and Coke is thus fairly obvious and it wouldn’t surprise me if this isn’t the first such product.
It turns out to be a fairly unremarkable blend. Green tea is a subtle flavoring and Coke pretty much overpowers it. I’m not sure that I could taste the green tea at all. On top of that it’s a sugar-free drink which means it has that somewhat nasty flavor of aspartamine or whatever it is that they put in diet soft drinks these days.
I’m not sorry that I tried it, but I won’t seek out more of it.
Sounds underwhelming, but do you know if there’s a carbonated green-tea soft drink in Japan? Seems like a natural.
It does seem like a natural, and I have wondered the same thing. If such a thing does exist I have not seen it–or at least I have not recognized it. It’s entirely possible I’ve looked right at it and not known what it was since I can’t read Japanese (although usually I recognize the kanji for tea).
That sounds straight nasty. I was keen on the idea till you mentioned the aspartamine. Yuk