You never appreciate something as much as when it's gone, and as an American living in Japan I've learned to treasure the things I can't find locally. Last night after my family was done eating dinner, I brought out a surprise for them: a can of A&W root beer that I'd spied at an import shop. Because the Japanese have a special disliking for the taste of root beer, thinking it smells like those Salonpas pain patches, it's nearly impossible to find the stuff here. (Oddly enough, root beer is the most popular drink in Okinawa, which has more A&W restaurants than McDonald's.) My family loves root beer, and the four of us split the can between us, mixing it with vanilla ice cream to make delicious (if small) root beer floats and drinking them as slowly as we could. We were in heaven.
Living in Japan makes you appreciate...root beer?
6 comments:
...A&W-tan?
People from England and Australia don't seem to like root beer either. I think it reminds them of stuff used for dental work? Either that or it's a flavoring used for medicine.
When a MacDonalds opened in my home town in the south coast of England in the mid-80s, it sold Root Beer. But not for long. It's not a flavour that many Brits 'get' - I get the medicine reference above. (Soft drinks are interesting - in Sweden there is a very popular drink called Julmust, a Christmas fizzy soft drink, which outsells CocaCola when on sale. It's a malty drink - and definitely an acquired taste)
Here in Spain people just love root beer, everybody in my family and my friends like it. And every bar and restaurant sell it.
I never liked it thou... :P
I don't know why, kinda reminds me the taste of an antiseptic mouthwash.
Peter - If you love and desire root beer, get a sodasteam machine! The don't do Japan right now but you might know someone in America that will ship to you! Plus you can get adapters to run off a cheap bulk tank rather than the little bottles.
http://www.sodastream.com/officelocator
Now there's a mascot you can get behind.
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