Been meaning to do this for a while, but fear kept me from it...
Japan has long been trying it's best to promote vegetable drinks. Some of you might even remember how I tested Kagome's fruit/vegetable mixes a while back, which while not great, were also not bad. Way before Kagome and the plethora of other vegetable/fruit mixes hit the scene though, there was something called aojiru. Aojiru doesn't do anything silly like mess around with sugar or fruity tastes. Back then, you drank it, you hated it and you asked for more.
Aojiru translates as 'blue juice'. But in Japan blue means green, so actually it really means 'green juice'. Don't ask me why blue means green, that's a whole different subject. I've long since given up wondering why a green traffic light is referred to as blue. I've heard you have to be born Japanese to understand.

Aojiru is commonly made from kale, a cabbage like plant that is supposedly full of minerals, vitiamins and other things that your body probably never gets. In fact my box, which is 100% kale and called 'super aojiru' tells me that one glass has the carotene of 3 tomatoes, the vitamin C of 6 oranges, the potassium of 6 green peppers and the calcium of a glass of milk. Sounds nice but do I really need, or even care about the potassium of 6 green peppers?
Aojiru is pretty hard to find which is no big surprise, but if you do see it, it'll probably be frozen. In order to drink it you can choose between microwaving it or letting it unthaw in some warmish water. Call me crazy, but microwaving frozen vegetable juice doesn't appeal much to me. In order to avoid drinking hot kale juice, I opt for the warm water and wait a few minutes.

Aojiru looks like green paint, smells like death and tastes like broccoli. And that's me being polite. The only thing aojiru has going for it are it's (apparently) insane health benefits. It supposedly does things like cure cancer, pneumonia and kidney infections, reduces stress, body weight, thins the blood, helps you live forever, etc.

My box costs 400 yen and comes with three frozen packs. I'm tempted to drink a glass everyday for a month to see what kind of changes come about, if only I can suppress my gag reflex. I think I'd rather eat the 3 tomatoes, 6 oranges and 6 green peppers.

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