The popularity of the art of “drawing” on coffee foam has quickly spread all over the world. There’s already a World Latte Art Championship (which is usually won by Japanese artists). The coffee foam art techniques are evolving fast; now artists can create 3D coffee foam art and some artists can even add colors to their designs (watch the video at the end of this post).
Related posts:
Source: Global Voices
The Oi Ocha brand was launched by ITO EN in 1989, following the success of its “Canned Sencha” brand that debuted in 1985. The brand is derived from the Japanese phrase, “Oi, ocha!” brand which is a way of calling out, “It’s tea time!” or “Tea, please!”– part of the warm, everyday conversations heard in Japanese homes. The Oi Ocha beverage brand is now one of the most familiar brands in the Japanese beverage market. It is the number one brand among green tea beverage products, second-highest sales among all beverage brands.
The Oi Ocha brand is also used in the marketing of tea leaf products. ITO EN’s roots as a specialist tea company may also be seen in its position today as Japan’s largest tea company, handling over 20% of all the green tea grown in Japan, and the Oi Ocha brand is also ITO EN’s main brand for tea leaf products.
The bottle in the picture is the strong-tasting variation of the Oi Ocha (Ryokucha). I like its balance between astringency and full-bodied flavor as well as the green tea fragrance.
More about tea:
The first time I tried Pocari Sweat I thought it would be some kind of copy of Aquarius by The Coca-Cola Company. Pocari Sweat has a somewhat milder taste than Aquarius and if you fill two glasses with both, Pocari Sweat is more transparent; but in general they are very similar.
But it turns out it was the oppositte, The Coca-Cola Company copied Pocari Sweat. In this screenshot of the movie Back to the Future you can see a Pocari Sweat (down to the right) during year 2015, suggesting that the drink would become very popular in United States in the future:
Pocari Sweat!
Zemeckis was partly wrong, Pocari Sweat was never released to markets outside Asia. What happened in 1983 is that The Coca-Cola Company released a similar drink to Pocari in Japan, called Aquarius. During the 80s they were both drinks exclusive to the Japanese market. The next country that was able to enjoy Aquarius was Spain in 1991 to make the most of the Olympics in Barcelona in 1992. Nowadays Aquarius is known in many countries around the world and Pocari Sweat is sold in over 10 Asian countries.
This is one of the most well-known Pocari Sweat commercials (I think it was shown during 2005-2006), in which Ayase Haruka chases a Pocari Sweat train:
Since then, actress Ayase Haruka is one of the models used by this brand.
