Ramune - Japanese soda

Ramune is a delicious and popular softdrink from Japan. It comes in numerous flavors such as orange, bubble gum, strawberry, melon, mango, cherry, lychee, peach, pinapple, banana and even octopus!

Ramune has become a symbol of contemporary Japanese culture and is known for it's iconic bottle. The bottle is not sealed with a bottle cap or twist cap like most softdrinks.

Instead it uses a glass marble to seal in the liquid. To do this the marble is jammed in the to top of the bottle creating a seal similar to a cork. To open a bottle of ramune, you have to use a special punch that comes with the bottle to force the marble down into the bottle.

The process is usually really messy but still doesn't take away from the unique experience of enjoying an ice cold bottle of ramune.

When drinking, the marble floats to the top of the bottle of ramune allowing the soda through. After the drink is consumed the top of the bottle can be removed and the marble removed. This is incredibly popular with kids. It used to be that ramune bottles had now way of removing the marble aside from breaking the bottle. This was dangerous especially to kids so the manufacturers of ramune started making bottles with easy to remove tops.

It's not exaclty clear when Ramune was developed in Japan. Some think that the original recipe was brought to Japan by british merchant ships and then adopted by the Japanese. At first an old fashion cork was used to keep the bottle closed but in the 1880's a glass marble stopper began being used by an osaka bottling company. In the 20th century crown caps made old fashioned marble stoppers obsolete but the iconic marble stopper of ramune endured. 

Ramune is still widely consumed in Japan and now even abroad. Bubble gum flavored ramune is probably the most well known flavor outside of Japan. There are numerous other flavors as I mentioned before. The most unique and most bizarre is the takoyaki flavor of ramune that is common in Osaka. Osaka is famous for takoyaki street food (a ball batter with a bit of octopus inside) so the makers of ramune began putting this flavor out as a novelty. Some actually do love the flavor while most just buy it as a gag.

Ramune's long history in Japan has made it as iconic as coca cola in the US. No Japanese person would consider a day at a summer festival complete without a cold, refreshing ramune.

I hope that if you visit Japan you get a chance to try Ramune. If not you can probably find a bottle or two at your local asian supermarket. Or just check out amazon.com

Thanks! And enjoy!