If Life gives you Lemons

make ramune!


Interesting story about that. Ramune actually comes from the word 'lemonade'. Except clearly that is a more than difficult word for the average Japanese person to say, lemonade, it would turn into something more like 'remoneido'. Shorten that word a bit and make it sound a bit better and thus the word ramune was born.

Ramune clearly tastes nothing like the lemonade you might make at home, but if you compare it to something like Sprite, you will have a closer comparison. Personally I find even that comparison to be still off, but it does have that ever so slightly carbonated, fizzy texture to its taste. Ramune is a sweeter beverage, with a slightly different flavor I can't exactly pinpoint, but definitely not quite a Sprite or 7-Up kind of taste. Since its beginnings, Ramune has branched out into many different variations and flavors and is no longer just a 'lemonade,' though that is the tried and true flavor and still always found on the shelf, unless of course it is sold out.

One of the aspects about ramune that makes it more unique to foreigners is its unique bottle design. You see it has a marble blocking the liquid upon purchase. You have to push the marble down into the bottle effectively trapping it there, inside the bottle, in order to be able to drink the liquid inside. Even then the marble sometimes prevents a bit of a challenge for the inexperienced Ramune drinker, but of course, that is part of the fun of it. This marble is then something you can never retrieve that marble. It is permanently stuck in there. Or at least until you smash the bottle open.

Ramune is largely a summer drink. And is mostly geared towards kids. I don't see many adults drinking it (none at all actually) and I rarely see it being sold outside of summer. Throughout the rest of the year they stick with their brown and green teas.