Japanese Weird Drink!? “POCARI SWEAT”


When you hear “sports drink”, what do you think of?

If you live in America, you might say “gatorade” ?

Here in Japan, we can also find varieties of sports drinks at stores including convenience stores, where sports and vitamin drinks take large space of a shelf.

 

Just like this.

 

Pocari Sweat

 

 

The most popular ones are “Aquarius” and “POCARI SWEAT”.

Both have similar tastes but POCARI SWEAT seems to be surprising drink for foreigners.

 

“POCARI SWEAT”

POCARI SWEAT

 

It is nothing wrong with the drink itself but they are surprised by the name.

 

The other day my acquaintance told me,

“What surprises my friends who come to Japan from overseas is sports drink named POCARI SWEAT. Because the word ‘sweat’ is in the name, they are grossed out or find it humorous. Many of them take pictures of the logo.”

 

Now that I heard that, it does sound like “drinking sweat” by the name.

My curiosity made me search about the origin of the name.

In the official website of Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd, the sales agency, it says,

 

“’POCARI’ was named just because the sound has light and bright tone; there is no special meaning in it. ‘Sweat’ was meant to point the importance of water and ion since you can see loosing them with your eyes by sweating.”

 

Hmm… I didn’t know that.

Just like this one, I’ve learned various things through managing JAPAN Style, so I am glad that I started it (^_^)

 

 

This is JAPAN Style!

 

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