Mining for Coffee

I love coffee the same way that guy at your office who wears long sleeves in the summer loves heroin. Probably the thing that I miss the most from New Zealand is coffee. It’s not because you can’t get coffee here in Japan – far from it. It’s just… sigh. It’s just not the same. The most glaring difference is the widespread availability of coffee in cans. I’m not especially well travelled, so… is this a thing? Do countries other than Japan do this? Who came up with coffee in a can? It tastes terrible, like licking a steel-stringed guitar. Despite the fact that coffee plus can equals disaster, there are a plethora of options to choose from. I can only assume that originally the process for making coffee was incorrectly translated into Japanese, leaving them with the impression that you had to involve mining somehow.

Best enjoy that coffee, boy. We lost six good men and one Chinee gettin' it fer ya.

I recently made two purchases which have revolutionised life in the miserable frigid Japanese winter. The first was a Nespresso coffee maker. It takes these little bullet things that are full of coffee. So it’s kind of like a shotgun, but the shots give life instead of taking it.

Sometimes George Clooney just pops by. It's that good.

The second was a thermos so I can draw my caffeinated bliss out for an entire workday.

In honour of the fact that I no longer have to metallic canned shit, I present to you suckas who do a well rounded appraisal of several products in the coffeeminium range that Japan seems to be pioneering. I decided to test a cross sample of canned coffees to see whether they all tasted like waste by-products of Johnny 5.

"Has anyone seen my waste expulsion canister?"

To that end, I asked some of the top Japanese coffee scientists to report on the coffee to metal ratio in each of the following cans of coffee. Then I realised that none of them had the intellectual resourcefulness to question whether roasted coffee beans and aluminium were complimentary tastes, so I ignored those reports and made up my own stats. As I understand from watching the Fukushima reactor news coverage this is how hard hitting reporting usually works anyway. In addition to estimating the coffee to metal ratio I will also give the product a rating for its Engrish content, since most companies will attempt to use Engrish to help sell their product. I can’t decide if unintelligible Engrish should constitute a high score or a low score. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Wheeeee!

Wonda Gold Premium 

Coffee to Metal Ratio: 1:6
This coffee tasted like being punched in the mouth by Atomu. It would be better off being called Wonka Gold Premium, because it’s like a hilariously irreverent food joke being played on you by a hilariously insane factory owner.

"...And then in that tube we add the metal! Don't get too close, Augustus."

Engrish: “GOLD is a Premium Coffee with a Radiant-like Beauty Perfected With Premium Beans.” Engrish Rating: This looks more like a song title than a descriptive sentence. Hey, Wonda. I know when someone is trying to Blind Me With Capital Letters, alright? You also probably don’t get to use the word premium twice if your can costs 80 yen – two thirds of the standard price for a capsule of coffee-flavoured metal. Partly for its use of the ridiculous term ‘radiant-like’, but mostly for its abuse of capitals, I have to award this effort a score of “It’s your life listen to your FUCK Heart” out of 10. (Best t-shirt I ever saw, by the way)

 Roots Creamy Café Café au Lait

Coffee to Metal Ratio: 0:4
Roots have an elegant solution to the problem of coffee and metal not tasting great together: remove the coffee. They wrote coffee on the can in at least two languages, but I swear there was none in the can. It didn’t taste bad, per se. But it didn’t taste like coffee either. Unfortunately, milkshake in a can is beyond the scope of this blog, so I can’t say much more about Roots Creamy Café au Lait.
Engrish: “The Waist-Wave Can provides optimum heat control combined with the HTST PROCESS in the pursuit of the authentic coffee flavour.” I have no idea what this means, but in this case it seems like that was intentional.
Engrish Rating: This is actually some good English with an L. Therefore, I give it a score of “Let’s enjoy English” out of 10.

Sumiyaki Coffee 

Coffee to Metal Ratio: 3:5
This one tasted like it could have been coffee before it was unceremoniously sentenced to alloyed purgatory.
Engrish: ‘This coffee is made with pure water. We roasted coffee beans by charcoal. You will have a relaxing and refreshing time (with the added goodness of aluminium for a hardy constitution).’ (The brackets are my suggested addition to this slogan.)
Engrish Rating: “Let’s coffee! YES YOU BEAUTY GIRL. We rest ourselves together. If it converses, we see the same things probably. We are have the starting of most happy relations.”

Special Mention! W Coffee Black The Hard 

Coffee to Metal Ratio: ??
For some reason I couldn’t bring myself to put this in my mouth, but I heard from some ladies that once you go this coffee you never go back.
Engrish Rating: Kind of porno