Latest news with #Natsuki
Japan Today
28-04-2025
- Business
- Japan Today
Coca-Cola Japan changes recipe for best-seller matcha latte, but is it worth a sip?
By SoraNews24 Matcha latte seems like it should be a pretty consistent drink, what with it really only having four ingredients: matcha powder, sugar, milk, and water. And yet, depending on the ratios between them, you can end up with a lot of different flavors, and if you go too far in one direction the result can be clotting astringency, overly intense sweetness, or unpleasant oiliness. When everything comes together just right, though, matcha latte can be magic on the taste buds, and surprisingly one of the best examples comes from none other than Coca-Cola Japan. As part of its overall beverage lineup, Coca-Cola Japan also produces the Ayataka brand of pre-made bottled green tea, and when they launched an Ayataka Matcha Latte in 2021, it was an instant hit, selling out in convenience stores and supermarkets as word of mouth spread about how delicious its specific mix of sweet, bitter, and creamy notes were. Some fans would say Ayataka Matcha Latte is just about perfect. Coca-Cola Japan, though, has apparently taken the old adage that you shouldn't tamper with perfection to, by corollary, mean that it's OK to tinker with near-perfection, and so they've recently updated the Ayataka Matcha Latte recipe, with the new version now available in stores. ▼ Old Ayataka Matcha Latte on the left, new Ayataka Matcha Latte on the right You might have noticed there are a few extra characters of Japanese text on the new label. The 濃い part is read **koi,** and in the context of flavors means 'strong.' The partial rename is because the new Ayataka Matcha Latte uses 50 percent more matcha powder than the old recipe did, sourcing its matcha from Kyoto tea merchant Kanbayashi Shunsho Honten, who selects its high-quality ingredients from tea grown in Uji, Japan's most respected matcha-producing town. Koi can also mean 'deep' when referring to flavors, and so the new Ayataka Matcha Latte's label is also a deeper shade of green than its predecessor. That same difference can be seen in the drinks themselves too if you pour them into side-by-side glasses. Taste-testing duties for this coveted assignment fell to our Japanese-language reporter Natsuki Goto, who started with a sip of the original Ayataka Matcha Latte to refresh her memory. Right away, the old Ayataka Matcha Latte greets you with milky sweetness, and the gentle bitter flavor patiently waits its turn until after that. To Natsuki's palate, the sweetness is pretty strongly pronounced, and it's the part that leaves the most lasting impression. Natsuki noticed far less sweetness, though, in the new Ayataka Matcha Latte. As soon as a single drop hit her lips, she could sense the strong matcha flavor, so the extra matcha powder really does make a difference. This is probably a good spot to point out that unlike with black tea, simply pouring a bit of cream into a cup of green tea is never done in Japan. Green tea and matcha latte really occupy separate spaces in Japanese beverage culture, and even the new Ayataka Matcha Latte is sweet enough that it's not really positioned as a substitute for a cup of green tea. What it is is a light dessert beverage, sort of a matcha sweet in drinkable form, and while some people might miss the old, sweeter Ayataka Matcha Latte, Natsuki is very happy with the new version, and thinks a lot of other people will be too. Photos ©SoraNews24 Read more stories from SoraNews24. -- Starbucks vs. two Japanese rivals – Who makes the best matcha latte?【Taste test】 -- Make luxurious, stylish green tea at home with this matcha warabi latte kit -- Coca-Cola's green tea cubes are an awesome new way to make Japan's favorite drink【Photos】 External Link © SoraNews24
Wall Street Journal
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
‘Vanishing World' Review: A Dream of Fertile Sterility
In Sayaka Murata's 2018 novel, 'Earthlings,' the protagonist, Natsuki, explains to her cousin that she and her husband have adopted the 'alien eye,' which allows you to see 'the way aliens see human society.' The Japanese couple explain that they've found a way to perceive and resist the workings of what they call the Factory—their name for society and the way it seems to serve no purpose but to reproduce itself. While her husband rejoices in his alien eye and seeks to break taboos around sex and behavior so as to further distance himself from the world of normalcy, Natsuki is more conflicted. When she was a child, she liked the idea of being special; now that she's an adult, her inability to think and feel the way she's supposed to has become a problem. It would be nice, she believes, to be like everybody else. Through her fiction, Ms. Murata has resolutely explored the strangeness of the cultural practices we otherwise consider ordinary. 'Vanishing World,' originally published in Japanese in 2015, is the writer's most recent novel to be translated into English. It chronicles the life of Amane, a narrator with an unusual degree of adaptability, as her society changes around her. No matter how intense the transformations, and no matter how much Amane thinks she will object to them in advance, she discovers she can seamlessly adjust and will nearly forget she ever lived a different way. Amane's life begins in relative isolation. She is raised as an only child by her mother, who instructs Amane over and over in a seemingly basic fact of family life—that when a mother and a father love each other very much, they come together and make a baby. The reason for this tedious oversharing exercise becomes clear when Amane is in elementary school: We discover that this story is set in an alternative reality, in which the ravages of World War II on Japan have led to a revolution in assisted reproduction. All Japanese children in Amane's world are conceived through artificial insemination. Sex between spouses is now regarded as a species of incest; the disgust you might feel at the thought of your own parents having sex is now generalized. When you marry somebody, you make them family—and you don't have sex with members of your own family.
SoraNews24
24-04-2025
- Business
- SoraNews24
Coca-Cola Japan changes recipe for best-seller matcha latte, but is it worth a sip?【Taste test】
Will the new Ayataka Matcha Latte prove more successful than New Coke? Matcha latte seems like it should be a pretty consistent drink, what with it really only having four ingredients: matcha powder, sugar, milk, and water. And yet, depending on the ratios between them, you can end up with a lot of different flavors, and if you go too far in one direction the result can be clotting astringency, overly intense sweetness, or unpleasant oiliness. When everything comes together just right, though, matcha latte can be magic on the taste buds, and surprisingly one of the best examples comes from none other than Coca-Cola Japan. As part of its overall beverage lineup, Coca-Cola Japan also produces the Ayataka brand of pre-made bottled green tea, and when they launched an Ayataka Matcha Latte in 2021, it was an instant hit, selling out in convenience stores and supermarkets as word of mouth spread about how delicious its specific mix of sweet, bitter, and creamy notes were. Some fans would say Ayataka Matcha Latte is just about perfect. Coca-Cola Japan, though, has apparently taken the old adage that you shouldn't tamper with perfection to, by corollary, mean that it's OK to tinker with near-perfection, and so they've recently updated the Ayataka Matcha Latte recipe, with the new version now available in stores. ▼ Old Ayataka Matcha Latte on the left, new Ayataka Matcha Latte on the right You might have noticed there are a few extra characters of Japanese text on the new label. The 濃い part is read 'koi,' and in the context of flavors means 'strong.' The partial rename is because the new Ayataka Matcha Latte uses 50 percent more matcha powder than the old recipe did, sourcing its matcha from Kyoto tea merchant Kanbayashi Shunsho Honten, who selects its high-quality ingredients from tea grown in Uji, Japan's most respected matcha-producing town. Koi can also mean 'deep' when referring to flavors, and so the new Ayataka Matcha Latte's label is also a deeper shade of green than its predecessor. That same difference can be seen in the drinks themselves too if you pour them into side-by-side glasses. Taste-testing duties for this coveted assignment fell to our Japanese-language reporter Natsuki Goto, who started with a sip of the original Ayataka Matcha Latte to refresh her memory. Right away, the old Ayataka Matcha Latte greets you with milky sweetness, and the gentle bitter flavor patiently waits its turn until after that. To Natsuki's palate, the sweetness is pretty strongly pronounced, and it's the part that leaves the most lasting impression. Natsuki noticed far less sweetness, though, in the new Ayataka Matcha Latte. As soon as a single drop hit her lips, she could sense the strong matcha flavor, so the extra matcha powder really does make a difference. This is probably a good spot to point out that unlike with black tea, simply pouring a bit of cream into a cup of green tea is never done in Japan. Green tea and matcha latte really occupy separate spaces in Japanese beverage culture, and even the new Ayataka Matcha Latte is sweet enough that it's not really positioned as a substitute for a cup of green tea. What it is is a light dessert beverage, sort of a matcha sweet in drinkable form, and while some people might miss the old, sweeter Ayataka Matcha Latte, Natsuki is very happy with the new version, and thinks a lot of other people will be too. Photos ©SoraNews24 ● Want to hear about SoraNews24's latest articles as soon as they're published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter! [ Read in Japanese ]
