This article from Kyodo posted on the Japan Today website has novelty and tut-tut value that conceals some poor journalism and incompetent research. It’s about the growing popularity in Japan of a guarana-based soft drink called Kidsbeer. The brewer, a small Saga Prefecture company named Tomomasu, is now shipping 75,000 bottles of the beverage nationwide. They are marketing it for use at events and celebrations attended by children, as well as a gift item. Their advertising slogan? “Even kids cannot stand life unless they have a drink.”

Here’s how Kyodo describes the beverage’s origin:

The drink originated from a cola-like beverage that used to be sold at the Shitamachi-ya restaurant in Fukuoka, run by 39-year-old Yuichi Asaba.

Asaba renamed the sweet carbonated drink “Kidsbeer” from “Guarana,” a move that made it an instant hit.

Asaba outsourced its manufacturing to Tomomasu, a beverage maker based in Ogi, Saga Prefecture.

Tomomasu tinkered with the drink by decreasing its sweetness and increasing its frothiness, the company said. It began shipping the transformed drink in late 2003.

That raised my suspicions. Here’s why: I live in Saga Prefecture and had been served a local guarana-based drink that looked like beer long before Asaba came up with his idea (around 2000, according to the manufacturer’s website).

The first time was at a banquet following a Buddhist memorial service on the anniversary of my sister-in-law’s death. At occasions such as these, the family members gather for a meal after the temple service. This can either be at someone’s home, or at a banquet hall. On this occasion, everyone met at a banquet hall near the home of my father- and mother-in-law. I make it a rule never to drink during the day, and not being in the mood for an orange soda or a cola, I was wondering what to order. (This was before chilled oolong tea became popular in Japan.) Someone in my wife’s family knew that this particular banquet hall stocked guarana and suggested I try some. I had never heard of it before, so I was game.

It was served in a brown bottle designed to look like a beer bottle, with a label that vaguely resembled one that might be used for European champagne. It was the same color as beer and poured out just like beer, with a frothy head. I even liked the taste—it wasn’t anything like beer, but it didn’t taste as sweet or artificial as a soft drink, either. In fact, I ordered a second one, and have had it on the two or three occasions I’ve been back to that same hall.

The reason for serving it is obvious. The Japanese are known for emphasizing group activity rather than individual activity. One of the negative aspects of this tendency is that people are tend to behave in similar ways in the same situation. Whether this is because everyone is expected to behave that way, or because people do not wish to attract attention to themselves for behaving differently, or a combination of both, is a bit of a chicken-and-egg question.

So, a guarana beverage that looks like beer gave men a way to appear to the casual observer they were drinking beer without actually drinking anything alcoholic.

I’ve never seen the drink anywhere else, however, whether in a store, on a restaurant menu, or served by other banquet halls. That’s why my suspicions were raised when I read the Kyodo report that it was the brainchild of a Fukuoka restaurateur. I took a look at the website of Tomomasu, the Kidsbeer manufacturer (all in Japanese) and read the section on the history and origin of the drink.

Kyodo Gets Lazy

It soon became apparent that Kyodo left out a large chunk of the story. It turns out that one of Asaba’s suppliers brought him a guarana-based soft drink in a beer-like bottle one day. (He thinks it was sometime around 2000.) A lightbulb went on over his head, and Asaba decided to turn the soft drink into Kidsbeer. He designed his own label, had them printed up, peeled the labels off the existing product, pasted on his own, and sold the drink at his restaurant.

Piracy? Highly illegal? You bet, but he got away with it, probably because he was only offering it in his restaurant.

Kidsbeer became a hit among his patrons. Two more ideas probably hit him simultaneously: one, I’ve got a moneymaker here, and two, if I don’t find another way to do this, I’m looking at a jail term.

That’s when he went to Tomomasu, who claim they dialed back the sweetness and increased the suds. They are a Saga-based company that already made a cider drink and another guarana-based drink that doesn’t look like beer, so it’s possible they manufactured the drink I had at the Saga banquet hall, or were the original producers of the drink Asaba pirated, or both.

The Kyodo article says Asaba “outsourced” production to Tomomasu. That’s a funny way to describe Asaba’s proposal for selling a drink he had no legal right to outsource to begin with. The professional journalists at Kyodo couldn’t spend an extra 15 minutes on research to discover this? Makes you wonder what else the average journalist can’t be bothered to do.

The guarana jolt

This article piqued my curiosity about guarana, and a Google search turned up plenty of interesting information. Here, for example, is the site of Guarana.com, which provides basic info on guarana drinks, which are popular in Brazil and other parts of South America. Efforts are now underway to market them worldwide, and Pepsi has gotten into the act. Guarana has a caffeine jolt—it’s dubbed “the rain forest energy secret”—and people can buy guarana tabs for an energy boost. There are also claims it can be used as an aphrodisiac. Some companies produce beverages that combine guarana with ginseng; one also contains bee pollen. That sounds like it would be a big winner in markets throughout Asia.

And the second photo above of a guarana soft drink looks like it could pass for a whiskey and water at a Japanese banquet hall. What versatility!

Her dream is to perform someday as a singer and dancer on the Chinese equivalent of Broadway, New York’s world-famous theater district, and although she’s only 17, Dai Yichen has some very big dreams.

Beijing-based reporter Jim Yardley offers a nice profile of a very pretty girl in the New China.

Yichen is one of 30 students at a private fine arts school on the outskirts of Beijing who are far removed from the days when Mao demanded that culture serve the Communist Party. They are studying how to perform in US-style musicals, an academic major about as improbable as American teenagers dedicating themselves to Peking Opera.

I’ve had a busy weekend, so unfortunately there isn’t enough time to file a full matsuri report, but I would be remiss if I failed to mention one festival held this week. That would be the Kanto Festival in Akita City from the 3rd to the 6th. It is one of the three major festivals of the Tohoku (northeastern) region, and it has been designated an important intangible cultural asset by the national government. More than one million people turn out to witness the spectacle every year.

The festival took on its current form during the middle part of the Edo period (which would be sometime in the 18th century) as a midsummer event to drive away the evil spirits and pray for a bountiful harvest. It is one of many lantern festivals in Japan, but none of the others are quite like this one. Men clad in traditional happi coats carry 235 poles filled with a total of roughly 10,000 lanterns down the city’s main street. Each pole holds up to 46 lanterns on crossbars. The poles are 12 meters high and weigh 50 kilograms each.

The men do not carry them on special belts, such as those worn by the people who carry flags in parades. No—they balance them on their hips and foreheads, encouraged by shouts of “Dokkoisho!” by the crowds lining the street.

And this is what it looks like: