Let's talk about vending machine coffee.
(Forgive the brusque introduction; teaching conversational English has led me to develop a vaguely synthetic directness in my speaking, causing my apparent personality to lie somewhere between impatient chatbot and badly-written movie policeman. Because almost all my students have limited English, my interactions in class need to be simple, with minimal language and minimal choice involved for the student. Ask me a question about my country. What's your favourite type of train pass? Tell me about your last vacation (also, my school teaches American English, leaving my kidneys to slowly eat themselves every time I say "vacation", "math" or - bite your tears back and say it - "candy"). This type of let's-not-beat-around-the-bush probing came rather unnaturally to me at first, since as a shy person and an Englishwoman my preferred method of conversation involves never making any direct requests, and preferably hiding behind some sort of furniture if any direct request is made towards me. Yet not only have I got used to it, but I've found it seeping into my interactions outside of class. Part of this might be good - I no longer come on a bit faint if I need to make small talk. It might be contrived and insincere small talk, but that's the essence of what small talk is. However, I'm not sure if I'll be happy to come back to the UK and have my friends discover that my awkward dorkiness has been replaced by a glaze-eyed smile and an insistence that they tell me what they like to do in their free time.
A second issue - and one you're no doubt being frustrated by right now - is that my need to constrain my speech may be causing somewhat nauseating floridity in my written communication.
Soz.
So to return to the beginning, let's talk about vending machine coffee.)
What can be said about this...substance?
I'm not sure you can call it a drink. I'm struggling to identify appropriate words for description, but I'm pretty sure I'm on safe ground with "liquid". As far as I can tell, Japanese industry is built on jihanki (vending machine) beverages. It is the secret weapon of the Japanese workforce; the magic which reanimates the bodies of office workers after their third successive night of drinking, long after they should really be a crumpled heap of business suit. Toyota, Hitachi, Toshiba, all built and oiled and refreshingly spritzed with coffee-in-a-can. It comes hot, as well, which when I first came here seemed like a scientific achievement on par with the polio vaccine. I didn't know, of course, that having your tongue burned to numbness is the ideal way to serve this coffee, in the same way that blinding yourself first is the ideal way to enjoy a video of a lamb getting a vasectomy.
The purpose of jihanki coffee is to drug yourself. No salaryman drags himself to the office after an all-nighter and downs a can of Emerald Mountain Blend because he enjoys the bouquet. Caffeine, sugar, adrenaline, most likely some sort of meow-meow-esque club drug is in there too. When you take a sip, your heart clones itself and sends the clones rushing around your arms and legs. Your whole body beats like a bassline. You can bypass your exhaustion and function well, at least for a couple of hours. Thus after a sleepless night, despite the odious taste, one drinks it through gritted teeth (which is rather counterproductive since it just spills all over your shirt).
I'm not sure how to describe the taste, but "sugar-glazed horse turd" approximates. A lot of these beverages have 'Blend' in the name. This is a mistranslation. There is no 'blend' in the taste. With every reluctant sip the flavours form an orderly queue and visit one's palette in neat succession: first a mouth of bland dirt, then aberrant bitterness, and finally a tooth-bleaching, venomous sweetness. You could set your watch by them. And I say "the taste" using the definite article, because there is only one taste. Five thousand million brands and types, and every single one tastes the same. Some are dark brown, some are light brown; they are merely different shades of the same evil wallpaper in the devil's chemical palace.
In case you couldn't tell yet, this coffee is not very nice. (I've had one which was almost passable, from the Tully's brand, but have not been able to find it since. Most likely I imagined it in a fever dream). And yet in spite of all this, I feel like when I return to the UK, I'll miss it. Of course, heroin addicts probably feel like they miss heroin. But I don't know if back home, I'd be able to find any energy drink or dodgy steroid which packs quite the same punch, or can turn you from dead-soul-in-a-skin-suit to efficient human being with quite the same no-nonsense briskness. Plus Red Bull doesn't come out of the vending machine warm.
