The Good Old America (5)

My First Visit to North America and the Cultural Shock of America

My first visit to North America was in 1972. As a child, I often peered through the wire fence at Washington Heights (now Yoyogi Park), a residential area for U.S. military officers, and was frequently taken by my parents to the Omotesando area, where shops catering to American military families were located. At that time, the areas around U.S. military bases in Yokosuka, Atsugi, and Fussa were dotted with recreational facilities for servicemen.

The first black-and-white television we owned broadcasted many American entertainment programs: “Father Knows Best,” “Rawhide,” “Laramie,” “Lassie,” and “Bonanza.” Shows like “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and “The Twilight Zone” were so terrifying to me as a child that I sometimes couldn’t sleep afterward.

Encountering Root Beer for the First Time

In those TV dramas, I often wondered what was inside the square cartons people pulled from the large refrigerators in their kitchens. On my first trip to the U.S., I finally learned that they contained milk or orange juice. This was an era when McDonald’s, Dunkin’, and Kentucky Fried Chicken had yet to arrive in Japan.

The first hamburger I ate at McDonald’s had bright yellow buns, and the drink I ordered — thinking it was cola — turned out to be root beer. Most Japanese people find the smell unpleasant and refuse to drink it, but for some reason, I was deeply impressed. Despite its name, “Root Beer” contains no alcohol. It’s a carbonated beverage made by fermenting over ten kinds of herbs and yeast. It’s said that pioneers in the 1800s refined the recipe over time, and that cola itself was part of the same tradition.

American Beverage Culture and Its Struggles in Japan

I only recently learned that root beer originated as a homemade beverage brewed in American households. Even Snoopy is said to enjoy it, yet my only memory of drinking it in Japan was at Café Almond, once located at the Roppongi Crossing. Later, A&W made several attempts to enter the Japanese market but struggled to gain traction — its only real success was in Okinawa, likely due to the U.S. occupation. Other carbonated drinks that have failed to take hold in Japan include cream soda and Dr Pepper Cherry. Why haven’t such delicious drinks become popular here? Perhaps this, too, has something to do with epigenetics!

Continued in “The Good Old America (6)”