Have you ever wondered why you can almost never find root beer in Japan? Except for a few specialty shops, it's pretty much non-existent over here. What gives?
If you ask a random Japanese person, the chances are good that they've never even heard of it and/or are convinced it's some kind of alcoholic drink. If they have heard of it, or tried it, then it's a good bet that they don't like it. Root beer equals that medicine-like softdrink that, to them, tastes the way a medical cool compress smells. Philistines....
I decided to find out if rootbeer's bad rep here really is deserved by taking my root beer quiz to the streets. Well not exactly the streets, more like my classrooms. Find out first hand what Japanese people really think!
Alright so I guess it's true, it is pretty much disliked, that is if you consider 12 people a decent subset to work with out of a population of 125 million, and who wouldn't? However, there's still no suitable reason why you can't find root beer here when Dr. Pepper, another often 'hated in Japan' softdrink, is all over the place. Go figure.
