Unlike in, say England, where we do fireworks when it’s cold and miserable in November, in Japan the fireworks season is the height of summer. In fact our city’s fireworks display and matsuri (festival) is tonight. To celebrate the fireworks (hanabi 花火 in Japanese) season, Suntory have released a new design for their Kinmugi (Rich [...]
With the on-coming onslaught of the unbearably humid Japanese summer Beer manufacturers in Japan are finding ways to maximise their sales, and big supermarket chain Aeon recently launched a ￥88 ($1) daisan (beer-like drink) onto the market. Tax on alcohol is (compared to say the UK) very cheap, with whiskeys and other spirits in off-licenses [...]
I came home from work the other day and found two new daisan’s (Japanese third-category beers) from Orion Brewery in Okinawa in the fridge. Actually my wife found them in the supermarket that day, Orion Brewery didn’t send me them unfortunately, which would have been nice. Orion beers in mainland Japan are distributed by Asahi [...]
This question bugged me for quite a while when I first discovered that Japan has 3 categories of beer, and I don’t mean lager, beer, bitter, etc. Thankfully, an article in the Daily Yomiuri yesterday cleared it up for me. The reason Japan has 3 different categories of beer is essentially for tax reasons. Regular [...]
