Shiso pepsi

How best to describe shiso… Well it’s a plant—an herb actually—used for seasoning, most commonly on sashimi. It’s kind of a mint. It’s good. And unlike the green tea coke which tastes exactly like coke, this actually doesn’t taste much like pepsi, but almost exactly like shiso. It’s pretty good!

Green Tea Coke

I’ve posted before about the experimentation companies do here with their products. I’ve been told there is a special word for this in Japanese, but I can’t recall it right now. Something like the konbini effect or some such. Anyways, basically because convenience stores are so popular in this country, companies are constantly fighting to make their products more noticeable to customers in these small stores. The way many companies do this is by constantly rotating special versions of their products. Matcha kitkat one week, cherry kitkat the next, apple kitkat the next, and so on. This keeps the product fresh and keeps people buying for fear that cool product version might disappear soon and never come back. I use kit-kat for an example because they seem to do this more than most, but many other products do it too.

Anyways, here is this week Coke variant. I don’t usually drink soda pop, and even with all the wacky pop flavors I see here I usually have no interest. But somehow I couldn’t resist this one. Alas, I couldn’t taste any green tea, just regular coke taste.

sweet potato kit kat

green tea coke

The games

Hachiko

Have I told you guys about Hachiko before, Japan’s most famous dog? That’s HA-CHI-KO, but the i is barely said so it sounds more like HACH-KO. He was a Akita dog, which is a special Japan dog breed, and he was owned by a university professor who worked in Tokyo in the 20s. Every day Hachiko would accompany the professor to Shibuya station and would wait there all day for his master’s return in the evening. This repeated every day for years, until suddenly the professor suffered a massive stroke while teaching and died instantly. Loyal Hachiko waited for his master to return for ten years, always returning to the station every day, until he also died. He survived on the good will of the neighborhood people who would feed him and take care of him, atho no one could ever prevent him from returning to the station to wait for the professor.

Hachiko and his story were so loved that after he died, Tokyo residents voted to build a statue of him that remains to this day at the entrance to Shibuya station. It’s a well known landmark and if you tell someone “let’s meet at Hachiko” they will instantly understand where to meet.

In addition to the statue, when Hachiko died his body was preserved and eventually stuffed. You can see his remains at the National Science museum in Ueno.

This story is very beloved in Japan and is often used to teach children loyalty. Soon the story may spread to the world. Hollywood is currently filming a movie about Hachiko staring Richard Gene and Jason Alexander. Of course knowing Hollywood, they will turn Hachiko into a robotic transformer from the future… Well, let’s hope they don’t screw with the story too much.

hachiko

hachiko statue

hachiko’s stuffed remains in Ueno