Family Mart Melon Gelato Frappe: I was perusing the offering at the Japanese convenience store Family Mart and found a selection of frozen "drinks," or frappes. They have a bunch of different flavors, including strawberry, peach, and banana. I decided to try the Melon, which seems to be a special flavor in Japan (I recently had melon-flavored soda at Moss Burger for example). The drink comes frozen but has a conical lid that extends almost to the base of the cup, keeping the center hollow. Once you purchase the drink, you remove the lid and push the sides of the cup towards the center in order to loosen the contents; then you fill the cup with hot milk from their beverage machines (that are used for other drinks too like coffee). After adding the hot milk, you use a boba-sized straw to mix the hot and cold contents until you get a milkshake-like consistency. As far as packaging science goes, this was a very cool thing to try. But as far as flavor, it was sickeningly sweet, like worse than having a Slurpee. Very strong artificial melon flavor. I thought, "do any Japanese people actually order this, or just tourists?" but while I was drinking it in their cafe, I witnessed two other people order the drink. So at least I was not alone. 2.5/5.0

drinks familymart japanese melon gelato frappe 2.5