25. Fanta “Shake”

What really needs a shake here is the CEO of Fanta.

Why ruin a perfectly good drink by adding a bunch of commands?

When people want a can of pop, they crave instant gratification, not a series of arm exercises, pectoral flexes, and deep thigh lunges. While the lunges may be a slight overstatement, it is true that you are supposed to shake this beverage for about 10 seconds before drinking it.

Then, just when your wrist alights with the flame of your arthritis, you receive a lamentable surprise: what you thought was a nice, carbonated treat is, in reality, an liquid travesty.

Perhaps liquid isn’t the right word. What I really meant was gel. An orange stream of magma will flow unwelcomly into your mouth from the crater that is this can.

You are correct: what you see here is actually JELLO. In a can. This drink (purposely) turns to jelly when you shake it for ten seconds. Fanta Japan, not unlike Starbucks Japan, foresees a market for these types of let-downs.

It is clear that in Japan jelly is the new black.

Banana Genocide: A Commentary

Let us briefly interrupt this list of kitchen harlequinade for an important news flash.

Genocide is at large in Japan. Readers will be shocked to hear this, but it is true: this country is currently disposing of and/or violating an entire race of bananas.

The conflict appears to have an intense neurological motivation rather than a religious or political one. Needless to say, countless bananas are being derided–graded even– on the basis of skin colour. (This apparently started when Belgian ethnologists colonialized Japan and issued identity cards to bananas in the 1920s). Those with green skin are rendered useless and jettisoned from the agricultural scene; those with lighter skin fare even worse.

Medium-toned “chartreuse” bananas are either cast out to die with their green-skinned cohorts or perceived as “near yellow” and shipped off for ruination. Rarely, this borderline breed is dumped in a displacement camp to die alone.

But the worst off are the yellow “level six” bananas. These citizens are individually wrapped in jail of cellophane and marketed to low-end convenience stores in the armpit of Tokyo.

While experts are attempting to address these crimes, we are not where we need to be; the UN still has not labelled this tropical fruit abhorrence a “genocide,” despite an estimated death toll of 200,000 green bananas.

Part of the problem is Tokyo. It continues to aid militia agricultural groups and to destroy forensic evidence of the horror, such as emeraldesque banana peels and their prisons of plastic.

24. Matcha McFlurry

If there ever was a molestation of culture, here it is.

The Matcha McFlurry spells the end of Japan’s traditional tea ceremony days. Once the drink of Zen Buddhists, matcha is now a small-town salve for a certain red-headed clown.

The Japanese are already sick of matcha misuses; the green tea finds its way into everything from marshmallows to toilet paper nowadays–but to sentence it to the jail of the Golden Arches is the final straw. This is corporate colonialism at rock bottom.

Next we’ll be taking the Sacramental Bread at Taco Bell.

It’s time to redraw the boundaries of green tea. It works as a tea, as 1000 years of success has shown us, and maybe as flavouring in the odd traditional Japanese dessert. Never should we find it in a bucolic storm of ice milk further threatened by the dark clouds of oreo.

23. Chocolate Potato Chips

In order to understand the reasoning behind chocolate potato chips, or Pottatcho, as they are cleverly called, let us first recall elementary school math.

Multiplying Integers

positive	x	positive	=	positive
negative	x	positive	=	negative
positive	x	negative	=	negative
negative	x	negative	=	positive

It turns out the rules for multiplying integers are the same rules that govern Japan’s culinary sphere. The person who masters this formula will go on to dominate kitchens across the nation.

The logic behind chocolate potato chips is simple: a positive food multiplied by another positive food equals a positive outcome. Chocolate and chips are both positive, good foods. This formula is fail proof. We’ve already seen this magic formula bring us gems like Almonds and Fish .

It matters little that the so-called “crispy” chips undergo saponification under a mask of year-old chocolate–or that the “mild” chocolate taste advertised here is as potent as the sperm of seven oxen.

What is important is the formula. Good foods plus good foods have a positive result; bad foods plus bad foods are also positive. We must eyelessly proceed through the dark of the night with these integer combinations in hand.

22. Mayonnaize Drops

Most Westerners spend their lives waiting for the day that condiments will be available in a drop-like form.

Through years of transient office jobs, mediocre marriages, and seasonal bouts of sinusitus, Westerners wait drearily for the golden panacea, a mustard-flavoured mint, a ketchup kandy, or better yet, a relish ring-pop.

Fortunately, in Japan, the long wait is over. The Mayonnaize Drop heralds as the promise of a new day.

No longer will people require clumsy accoutrements such as hot dogs or hamburgers to sneak in that taste of sauerkraut.

The stigma of liking condiments as is–in their elemental form–is now over; the sinister curtain has been drawn, the closet door, opened.

We can only hope that the brave Japanese factions that have fought for the Mayonnaize Drop will inspire Westerners to do the same. Radicals may be tried, but it is only through perseverance that the Mayonnaize Drop will make its way to the shelves of our nations.

21. The Frosted Vegetable Roll

Starbucks Japan has really done it now. First the Coffee Jelly Frappuccino and now this.

People everywhere must be getting tired of these taste violations, not to mention the readers of this blog, who have to digest the bland prose dedicated to them.

But seriously, what was Starbucks thinking? A frosted cruciferous cake impaled with a tomato creme filling? Worse, this is marketed as a diet product, with calories and fat grams stamped on its placard.

How does a dieter stand a chance against this assault? No wonder the epidemic of obesity is spreading like hives through the Westernized World. If I were a strict dieter held at gunpoint and given the choice between this number and a bar of pure butter, I would eat the butter.

In addition, the cake resembles the normal roll cakes in Japan, leading the consumer to believe he or she is eating something valid and even tasteful. But the first bite reveals the truth–a zap of occult spinach and tomato, leaving an aftertaste of deception and dolor.

20. 2cm Cheese

This is a great idea, Japan. Why not individually wrap a 2cm slant of cheese and market it to low-wage earners who lack refrigerators?

The same simpletons who buy this also buy scallop puffs.

But unlike that calorically empty snack, the 2cm cheese may offer nutritional benefits. One serving likely contains 1/59th of your recommended daily intake of calcium and .0408% of your daily intake of zinc. Any other nutrients are nullified by the fact that this cheese does not need refrigeration; luke-warm shelved cheese is the definition of a nutritional masoleum.

On the bright side, you’ll be feeling sleek after restraining yourself to a mere vestige of beige lactose. If you’ve been especially good, you can even add an individually wrapped cashew or 1/8th of a Premium Plus to your dairy delight.

19. The Coffee Jelly Frappuccino

Is Starbucks capable of a culinary abortion?

Yes–the coffee magnate is not immune. In fact, Starbucks has not one, but several little abominations under its belt. Most are in Japan. Here, the days of saccharine caramel lattes and aromatic espressos have been replaced with bean abortions and vegetable violations (soon to come).

But our current focus is on The Coffee Jelly Frappuccino. Few words need to be said. Japan foresees a market for jelly; this market may include bubble tea aficionados or Eliot Spitzer, but for the average coffee drinker, jelly fails. Caffeine should never be delivered in a gel form; this renders a simple adult indulgence ludicrous, petty, and even perverse.

As one consumer puts it “it’s like drinking blood clots”.1

Perhaps a vampire would like this drink–OR it could be a salve for bleeding women in a menstrual hut off of Waimea Falls, Hawaii. Normal humans should logically veer away.

1. G.Grisé. Starbucks and You: The Leukocyte Connection. 2008. Plasma Publishers: Brooklyn, NY.

18. The Ice Dog

Any Japan-O-Phile will know that Osaka is the birthplace of the culinary abortion. More sensory violations occur in Osaka than in any other place in the world. This is because Osaka is the “creative” heart of the already めずらしい Japan; alternatively, it is because Osaka is home to America Town, a bleak subdivision where washed-out teens listen to Avril Lavigne, wear pink converse shoes, and bask in the empty glory that is the American Dream.

These individuals satisfy their hunger with “American” fusion foods that are in reality borderless miscarriages.

A prime example is the Ice Dog.

Here the American staple, the hot dog, is enmeshed with the Japanese staple, the softo-creamu. These two bodies meet to form a blastocyst of bad.

We have already discussed Japan’s two food textures, pillow soft and brick hard. The Ice Dog transcends these divisions since the wetness of the ice cream slackens already soft bread to the consistency of paper mache.

You should say no to this product. If you want to fit in, buy yourself a black and purple striped T and a Jamaican tri-colour belt. This is the national uniform of Japanese youth, especially those from America Town.

17. Edamame Kit-Kat

The Kit-Kat is so ubiquitous in Japan that even Rosemarie Fritzl would notice it cropping up now and then.

Little more than a plebian wafer combination in North American, the Kit-Kat of Japan is deified to the realm of demi-god or perhaps Buddha itself.

But of greater interest are the flavours that Japan has created to mask the faint cardboard aftertaste of the original variety.

They include

• “vanilla” (which must contain something other than vanilla since the bar emerges in a pure white form)
• “banana” (sporting a pastel yellow look)
• “strawberry” (made with .048% real fruit)
• “sakura” (a seasonal shame)
• “apple” (fortified with vitamin C in case citizens begin to confuse confectionary with produce)
• “swirled melon” (from the swirled melon tree native to the Niger River)
• “blood orange” (no thank-you)
• “eraser” (the Kit-Kat design is imprinted on erasers throughout the nation. Unfortunately, erasers are non-caloric and cannot be further discussed).
• “matcha” (an abomination of culture)
• and finally, “edamame.”

Edamame is the greatest offender here (followed closely by the light green “apple”), not only to the Kit-Kat but also to Mother Nature. Legume should never be a flavour of chocolate, especially not edamame, a legume of otherwise great integrity.

For now, stick with the plain red and white label. Your won’t know what you’re missing, but then again, nor will Rosemarie Fritzl.