Japan Loving That Garbage Coffee
Here in America, the home of taste and sophistication, we drink "tea," to demonstrate that we are not crude savages. In Japan, however, no "thousands of years of cultural legacy" can hide the fact that they drink garbage coffee.
You thought that Japan was a nation of poise and refinement? You, the dirty American, were embarrassed at your relative lack of elegance when compared to Japan's long history of dignified art, culture, and religion? Forget it, my friends. Here in the USA, we know how to go into the Starbucks and order a nice "herb tea," like civilized humans. In Japan, however, the tea-drinking tradition has been completely lost in favor of 7-Eleven coffee, which sold half a billion cups to the Japanese last year. From the Wall Street Journal:
Coffee long ago replaced a traditional staple, green tea, as the biggest-selling hot drink in Japan. From 1990 to 2012, consumption in Japan rose 50% to 256,930 tons. That is nearly three times the total for green tea, which fell 3% in the same period, the All Japan Coffee Association says.
If we can only break our national addiction to Cheez, we can claim cultural superiority to the Japanese once and for all.
