Trader Joe's Sparkling Black Tea with Peach Juice: This is a light refreshing soda alternative that essentially tastes of cold brew peach tea with a little bit of carbonation. It's low calories (15 calories a can with 2 g of sugar), which I found to be sweet enough. Purchased in a 4 pack from Trader Joe's. 3.5/5.0
recommended drinks tea traderjoes sparkling black peach juice 3.5JA Foods Kabosu Juice: This small aluminum bottle contains a non-carbonated citrus juice with pulp from kabosu, a relative to yuzu that's popular in Japan. The fruit looks like a round lime and is green on the outside but orangish-yellow inside. The juice tastes a little bit like calamansi and generally is more concentrated in flavor than regular lime juice, while smelling of a mix of tangerine and lime. Enjoyable overall and unique - I'm glad to be getting to taste different types of citrus-flavored food here! 3.5/5.0
recommended drinks japanese citrus jafoods kabosu juice 3.5Suntory Grape Gokuri Juice: I expected this drink to be carbonated, but it's more like a grape juice that contains pulpy bits of grape. It comes in a thin aluminum bottle with a screw top, which is pretty convenient because the drink is too sweet to want to drink in a single serving. Overall, it was a largely average drink, not something I would purchase again. 2.5/5.0
drinks japanese suntory grape gokuri juice 2.5Ichigaku Carrot juice with ginseng : This bottle of carrot juice retains much of the pulp of fresh carrots, giving it a slightly grainy texture. The juice has been slightly flavored with ginseng and lemon. I was hoping it would either be more sweet or more carrot-y; overall, it's not particularly good or bad. 3.0/5.0
japanese juice drinks ichigaku carrot ginseng 3.0Pokka Sapporo Ribbon Jelly Grape Drink: This is another grape jelly drink I purchased from a vending machine. It comes in a plastic bottle as opposed to a can. I like this one less than the other as the jelly is not carbonated, so the overall taste is not as unique. It's essentially a grape juice for kids that contains jelly that you break up by shaking the bottle. One benefit the plastic bottle has over the can, though, is that you can reclose and shake the bottle some more in the case that the jelly doesn't break up evenly. 3.0/5.0
drinks vendingmachine japanese juice pokkasapporo ribbon jelly grape drink 3.0Marusan Sweet Potato Soy Milk: Similar to Taiwan, there are a lot of flavored milk products on the grocery shelves. I decided to give a few a try. This one is a sweet potato-flavored soy milk that seems to only come in juice boxes, probably meant for kids. It does taste like sweet potato, but it's extremely sweet and as a result hard to finish even for a small juicebox. Imagine the pumpkin-flavored desserts you get in the US around Thanksgiving, but sweet-potato flavored. 2.5/5.0
juice japanese Daiei marusan sweet potato soy milk 2.5