Most traditional coffee shops serve "melon float," melon soda with vanilla ice cream floating in it.

Actually, my favorite melon beverage is "melon juice," sold mostly in basements of department stores at a counter with a row of blenders. It's kind of like an Orange Julius, only made with honeydew melon. You can also get strawberry and other fruits blended up with whatever milky substance that is.

Japanese beverage vending machines hold endless fascination as soft drink varieties come and go. Aside from the endless variety of coffee beverages and the growing number of tea beverages, I have seen apple soda, mango soda, cardamom soda, and plum wine soda--once each.

Those were great! I love Japanese CMs.

Apple tea soda is the one I wish I could find. The one time I've been to Japan, I ended up the trip with a couple days at Tokyo Disney Resort, and really enjoyed this particular drink there. Figured I live in southern California, there are tons of Japanese markets here--will be no problem to find it back home. No dice--if anyone's heard of it, they're sure it's not exported. Ah, well...

MrLapLap said he's had it a couple of times, once a least was from one of those vending machines that sell you a cup of drink with ice in it.

According to this website Liptons make it and it was available last November: http://plaza.rakuten.co.jp/yorchie/diary/?ctgy=2 - the guy was stocking up as he said it was already disappearing from stores then.

The same flavour drink can be released by different companies during different years. Was it Liptons you had?

Non sparkling apple tea is a pretty common drink - so you should eventually find one kind or another.

It was Kirin, and admittedly this was back in 2003, so who knows what might have happened since then. I hadn't really thought about it, or done any research, in a few years--this thread reminded me of it. I may have to poke around the net a bit this weekend and see if I can find any new info.

There might be a resurrection one day, but it's possible you'll never see this product again (which is why the guy in the thread above was hoarding the Lipton Apple Sodas before they disappeared).

We have a virtual shrine for long departed drinks in this forum, you might like to pay your own respects...
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showt...72#post7574772

I could swear I've seen the Lipton apple version in Lawson's & AM/PM in the past few months. Comes in the pourable cardboard container. Lipton Peach tea seems to be in the cycle now & it's pretty good.

The stuff in cartons is not sparkling though ....
I remember some kind of apple tea with bubbles (from one of my student trips to Japan - back in the late '80s). Not a bad drink, but I've never noticed it since, I would guess that one maker or another gives it a go every so often.

Was it called "Sparkli'g" ?

Just "tea".

You were here in the 80's too?:confused: :p

I don't think so.

IIRC it had an all kanji name - which was something along the lines of: iron|chef|red|tea|apple|taste|carbonated. (I might be wrong about the iron chef bit - but I distinctly recall "iron" in there somewhere).

The only place I ever saw it was in vending machines at Shinjuku station.

BTW - I notice that there are now vending machines at Akihabara station which sell bread-in-a-can. This is a realization of one of my very favourite home-made oyaji gags. (Q: What do you call a machine that sells bread? A: A jidou-pan-baiki).

Not sure if it's the drink or the advert that has legendary status.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ko888qUIiYs


Suru means to finely grate (pulp) something - like you do with ginger/wasabi/daikon. Suta is the past tense so it means something that's been finely grated/pulped. I'll leave you to figure out what the other word means :)

There were a whole series of these adverts. Kerching! (Who said 'it don't come easy'?)

groan....