Japanese Ramen Soda Carbonated Cup Noodles

00:00:00 John Daub: Is the box that came. This box came to me just a couple of days ago. This is the box that houses ramen soda cup noodle soda. You can see it's even on the box here on the side. It's bizarre, and I don't know why it came in a box. I just wanted to try the drinks, but they made me buy more. So in this live stream, I'm going to open this up and drink ramen cup noodle soda. Why? Because it's here and it's on my table. And it's just weird enough that it can only be. Well, only in Japan. All right, enough of the music. Okay. All right, cut that off here. How you doing, everybody? I'm completely back. Like, I'm on the wrong side of the camera. How you doing? So before I start this live stream, I want to. I want to go in here and actually try these cup noodles. Now, this is one of my favorite ones. This is called cheese curry. The cup noodles that they have here in Japan are bizarre. How you doing, Jason? I see Natalie's here. Lisa. Oh, what's up? You're not supposed to. To open it up fully. So take the boiling water and fill it to the cup here. I think everybody in the world has made this once or twice in their lives. And then close. Is there a little cat in here? Look at that. They always put a little ray of sunshine in their cup noodles. They gave me extra cheese. She's not good for my cholesterol. So I'm gonna take this with it with. With us and go sit down over here to the table where we have our unboxing prepared. This is gonna be a lot of fun. I actually have prepared here four champagne glasses and a computer for discord server access. So we can talk to you as I try my best to describe these drinks. What is going on here? How you doing, everybody? So this is. Hey, down here. Down here. Yeah. So this is going to be a pretty fun live stream. I've been waiting for a couple of days to open this up. Let's see what's inside here. I guess this is really an unboxing TGIF for those in the United States. The presentation is really nice. They've laid out the curry. The. The curry one I guess, is in the middle. I think this was in the middle before I put these in refrigerator. This is what it looked like when I opened it up. So I've actually unboxed it. This one is this one right here. Because I'm not gonna go buy another one. Sometimes they Come with little packs. So right now there's nine main flavors that Nissan has Cup Noodles at the store. These are the drinks, the lineup. Curry. Can we get a round of applause for curry? And then cup noodle. Whoa. So this is the original. That's pretty gross. Look at the carbonated bubbles put in there. Do anything with Photoshop. This is sea. Whoa. Seafood noodle. How's this taste? I'm pretty curious to figure this one out. K1ertu writes in here. Ew. I can feel that. And then chili tomato soda. What they are actual drinkable. Here's the cap. The bottom looks like this. It's kind of neat to turn it around because, you know, some of the. Some of the photos don't show you that. This is for history too. This one says it's spicy. What? Really? Are they serious? This is spicy. Why would they do that? And then you have the lineup of. Of regular cup noodles. Here's seafood. And. And this one's a pretty good one too. You can cut up vegetables. This is tonkotsu cup noodle regular. This one looks pretty spicy here. They have different ones here. Miso is really popular. And this is shio, which is salty. And then chili, tomato. I don't know if you've all. If you've had all of these. Put this to the side. Boom. All right, never mind that. We have absolutely wonderful lineup of sodas here on the table. Check this out. What is this? Osmo 5 is weird. All right, so I'm gonna leave it up to the Internet. Which one should we try first? Here. You can leave it in the comments right here. I can read it while I prepare this and the champagne glasses. Which one do you think is the. The best one to start? Seafood curry. Spicy seafood curry. It's down between the seafood and the curry, apparently. Curry, curry, curry, seafood, seafood. They're all pretty. They're all pretty scary. Seafood. Do it. I'm gonna do all of them. But while I'm. While I'm doing them back here. Osmo5. You know what? Osmo5 going to name this one, by the way, this is. As much as it tilts, it's pretty bad. This is the. Sorry for the trip here. This is the cup noodle curry. And what I love about this one, the curry one, you got to mix it up a little bit. This has cheese in it. And I sent this to my Daimy supporters on Patreon. I think it was earlier in the year or at the end of last year. It was so good. You could smell the curry goodness Little croutons in here. And there's cheese. And the melted. The cheese melts. And then it gives you this really awesome ramen cheesiness. Look at that. Oh, man, Ah, blocks of cheese. It takes a little bit longer for them to melt. Oh, man. I'm gonna want to eat this one real soon. I put this to the side. We can't ruin our pallets. All right, up champagne glass. Here we go. This is. Hey, WRX hurt. Well, we got some. We got wxr WRX Turbo is in the house here. You hear Bradshaw Studio. It's pretty excited to try this one. And Katayama is in the house. I hope you have poison control in on speed dial. Hey, it can't be that bad. I know that you'd want to try this too, if you had the chance. I'm pretty sure of it. Pretty sure. All right, let's go for. Let's go for seafood. Because this is just the most. This is probably the nastiest of them all. Kanai is not here. She has no idea that I'm doing this. I'm gonna save her a little bit, but I know I'll be the one either drinking it or dumping it down the drain. Will this make me sick? Only one way to find out. We gotta have to. You know what? This gimbal. Everything is weird. Okay, here we go. Pan down. All right. There was a hiss from it. Oh, gosh. Oh, good God. Oh, oh. Oh, that's frothy, dude. Oh, you can smell the seafood. Do you smell it? Oh, was that vapors going on the camera? There were vapors. Hold on. It. It does not pass the. It doesn't pass the smell test. It's either. It's the bright lights that is making me squint or the fumes. All right, let's give this a try here. Kampai. I mean, it's. It's not. It's sweet. The. You know what the problem is? The images of the cup noodle seafood is in my mind. The little seafood floating on the top, it's hard to delete that. Oh, man, this smell makes me want to hurl. I mean, look, it's not bad. The smell is bad. It smells like the freaking cup noodles. All right? It's a sweet drink that smells like. So it's a. We call it a mind melt. You know this word? Mind melt? All right, It's a mind melt. Like, mentally, you're not prepared for this. There's nothing you could do to prepare for this. The odor is just gross. Okay. All right. You know what? All right, which one did you guys want? What was next here on our list here we have regular curry and spicy tomato. What are you guys looking here? Curry. All right, looks like the curry was pretty popular before. Really? Curry boy. All right. I'm very. I'm very critical of the curry, too. As somebody who eats a lot of it and grew up on curry, the Indian version. Because my mom is from India, I can say that know it has a very high, high hurdle to. To overcome here. But I'm going to say this. Probably not as bad as a se. This we. The seafood one, I can see is probably being the worst of them all just because it's seafood. Why would you put seafood in a soda? Really? Nissen cup noodle people. Brad Fletcher idea. Last stream was about fireworks and now ramen. So Nissen needs a new flavor. Shakudama ramen, an explosive, spicy flavor. I like that. We just ex. Exceeded our goal of. Wait, listen for the hiss. Right? Listen. Oh, it smells like I just went into, like, a Coco Ichiban, like a curry house. I could smell the masala. Is that. That is so wrong. You know what? There's a drink in India called Thumbs Up. I love Thumbs Up. It's like Coca Cola and they put a little bit of masala in it to give it a little spice to it. You know, It's a little blast. This thing is so. This thing is like thumbs up times 1,000. All right, we need the. The. All right. Just gonna. Just put it in. All right, here we go. Curry, curry soda. Curry noodle, ramen, soda. Oh, fudge. What? All right, first of all, it does look like soda. That's positive. So you can see the bubbles. Champagne flutes are the best to see the bubbles. Let's see if. If turning it around. Andy says it looks terrible. Right? This is the side light here. It probably tastes terrible. It looks like a bubbly broth. Oh, it's pretty nasty. Bob. Joe, we are 100% on Kickstarter. Congrats, John. Thank you. Yeah. The Kickstarter has exceeded 100. I'm pretty excited about that. So we're going to have a fireworks festival no matter what. All right, let's. I. I have to just drink this here again. Masala. Very strong curry house smell. I noticed this. The smell does not match the taste, which is a good thing. Which is a good thing. The smell does not match a taste. It doesn't taste like. Tastes like Thumbs up, but more curry. All right. Thumbs up is this amazing drink in India made by Coca Cola company. I believe it's just got more curry. It's like Coca Cola with curry. And that's not a bad thing. I think this might end up being one of the best ones of them. All right, all right, so this is like Coca Cola with curry, but it's. The smell is pretty raunchy. All right, I have to get rid of that with some of this cheese curry ramen. Oh, that's really nice. Oh, this is one of my favorites, this cheese curry. All right, put that to the side. All right, I can see it. That was not that bad. That was not that bad. And that's weird. That should be. That should be the worst, but that's not that bad. All right, next up, we've taken down curry and seafood. These are the hard ones. Let's get in. It's time for. We're gonna go with chili tomato. What do you think? Chili tomato. This is supposed to be spicy. Spicier than the curry. Thank you. Sean. Sean. It's like steaming out of there. Oh, It reminds me. The smell of. It reminds me of this tomato soup that I would have in elementary school. They used to serve it, like, I don't know if anyone else went through the American school lunch program in the 1980s, but you always get this tomato soup in these bowls. It was chicken noodle or tomato. It brings back cafeteria tomato soup smell for me. And it's cold, but smells very much like tomato soup. Slight spiciness to it. Oh, wow. Thank you. Reese Reez vlog. All right, let's try it. This is. If this looks like blood, I'm just not even gonna drink it. All right. If this looks like blood, this is so over. Here you go. Ready? Oh, wow. It doesn't look like blood. Oh. Oh, wow. The smell is starting to come out. I guess it could be like a V8, maybe a carbonated V8. It definite. It definitely smells like tomato soup. There's no. There's no mistaking about it. It's. I mean, I could see how some people might like this. It's sweet. It's carbonated. It's got the soda taste to it. All of these have a soda taste to it. Sweet, carbonated. There's a saltiness. I don't have the spiciness of it. No. Ah, ah, ah. So the acidic tomato ness of it hits a part of your tongue, and then there's a spiciness that expands to a different area of it. So if you're talking about, like, where it hits in your palate, it does a pretty Good job of attacking the entire tongue. Sweet, salty, spicy. It's even, like, some bitterness. Acidic. Look, I think if the. If you're. If you're like 10 years old, this is. You're gonna puke. All right, this is too. This is taste overload. But if you're like. Like me, you know, a little. A little bit older, it wakens up the palate, maybe in places you never even knew existed. It's like doing an exercise for the first time. It hurt. It's gonna. This is gonna hurt the next day. All right, this one. I could see it growing on me a little bit, but honestly, it's freaking gross. All right, this is science, everybody. This is what we do here. If you were. If you were here in Japan, you would be drinking this, too. I'm guaranteed. Well, most of you. Some of you. Most of you. Cup Noodle. One here. And I'm gonna activate the Discord server here. So I've got this on the computer here. So if you want to. You could actually talk with me live. It's pretty cool. On the Discord server. Let me open this up here. I think. I think. Hello? Hi. 821 has set it up. He has. All right, so I'm going to enter. How do I enter? I have become a speaker. Can you hear me? All right. UFO Bob. I can't hear you. I'll work on this later. Let's. I can't. I can't hear. You know what?

00:19:03 Discord Caller (Katayama): All right.

00:19:05 Discord Caller: I can hear you, John.

00:19:07 John Daub: All right, good. It feels better when I'm not alone here. Feels better when I'm not alone. And being echoed back here. We got a lot of echoes. Yeah. I think. You have to focus. Turn the volume off on the YouTube. This is the original. All right. Thank you. This is the original. This has to be the best because it's the original. It's pretty nasty, Katayama. That look, when John starts questioning his life choices, this will make you do that. Do you know why? Because it's freaking weird. All right? And you have to try this. Danny, I wanted to say hi and wishing you a nice day. Oh, and don't drink that stuff too much. I. I don't feel it. Danny. Oh, man. Making you suffer. Buy proper drink after rights in PC. Gamer41 it seems like the world is worried about my health. Look, if they make it, it can't be bad for you, right? It's got to be healthyish. Sure. I mean, it can't. Like, it's not going to destroy your, like, Liver right away. You have to drink probably a lot of this in order to. I don't want it. Look, and really, the reason why I was skeptical about this being have any health benefits. And it doesn't look like it really does have any, except for energy, which is a health benefit. If you're playing video games, you don't drink the broth in soup. People in ramen. All right, you leave the broth behind. Why? It's got all of the fat. It's got all of the. The. The cholesterol and salt. All this stuff that will destroy you. And they made a soda out of it. So they should just have, like, ramen fat soda. That would be the most gnarly. That's next level. Lee, Richard, get a beer to wash it down. Like, everyone's, like, worried about me. Really? All right. I will get a beer out of the refrigerator afterwards. All right, let's see. Katayama, do you have anything to add here? Because I see you're in here. Maybe there's some taunting.

00:21:10 Katayama: I'm. I'm just curious. Does. Does Kane know you're trying to off yourself?

00:21:15 John Daub: Kanai does not know. Hey, who's laughing? You are gonna get banned. Moderators. All right. Kanai does not know I'm doing this. She knows that the box. A box arrived, but did not know what was inside. Let's keep it that way. It was me, John.

00:21:30 Katayama: Who else would it be?

00:21:33 John Daub: All right, listen. Listen carefully to the sound of opening cup noodle ramen soda. You can see it's steaming like a. Like a gun that has been shot. Look at that. Holy crud. I'm speechless. There's certain. There's certain things in the world that will just leave you speechless. Sights. Usually the things that you see. This is something that you smell. It just makes you stop in your tracks and, you know, again, having lived and. And traveled through India and certain areas of China, I've discovered smells that I never thought that I, the human, should ever smell. And this is one of them. Oh, my gosh. It smells like an armpit. It smells like an armpit. And it. Here's. Oh, no, this is. I use Old Spice. It's just something I did in the 80s, and I just never stopped. It smells like an armpit that had used Old Spice after a workout. Do whatever you want with that. All right, here we go. It's. Oh, that does look like the color of the. Of ramen cup noodle ramen. But again, it could be ginger ale. But knowing that it is instant ramen soda. Again, this looks like the broth somewhat smell. I still got Old Spice and armpit with a little bit of ramen. All right. To your health. It's because it's not to mine. Trevor. John, can't be long because I'm going to work. I dare you to shotgun one of them, Trevor. Do you want me to die? See, the smell is rancid. The taste is not that bad. Yeah, it does somewhat taste like I licked an armpit, which I've never done that I remember. Although the fact that I would. This would. I guess it would be like if I did lick an armpit with. With Old Spice, this would be it. Interesting. Peso. That was so uncalled for. All right, there you have it. I. I tried all three. Which was your favorite? Like I'm getting looking at the comments here. That sounds toxic. Yeah. How do you know what that tastes like?

00:24:43 Katayama: I don't.

00:24:43 John Daub: This is a guess of if I lick myself. That's who you trying to convince? It doesn't taste bad. It doesn't taste bad. The thing is, all right, Japan is a country that has found a way to insert smells into products. In fact, a lot of the products that you eat that are processed, they have smells added into the McDonald's is a great, great example of this. There's French fries. There's a reason they smell like McDonald's french fries. McDonald's french fries. I can never reproduce that smell in my own house. They add in odors and things like this. And Japan is no exception. In fact, I think that they might be the masters of like Jedi knights when it comes to adding smell into foods. They're really good at it with processed foods because the Japanese consumer would expect no less. It has to smell really good. Here's the thing, though. Japanese companies have to innovate all the time. So when. When they're put to the put. When they're put to the test and challenged, they come up with things like this. So sometimes you can get really good smells. Why not go the other way? I'll tell you what, this campaign, these were impossible to get my hands on. I had to get on. I was on Twitter, I was on. On all of the websites. Yodobashi Camera and Big Camera were selling this. All of them had a wait in order to log onto the server. I let it go for 12 hours and I still could not get onto the server to order one before they were sold out. So I had to go to a reseller. So I ended up paying 40% more for this just for the the pleasure or displeasure to trying it. Because I am curious as heck to see what this stuff tastes like. Now. I know. And I am. You know what? I'm actually inspired by. By the cup noodle people that they. They came up with this. It is gross. It tastes gross. I mean, it doesn't taste that gross. It smells gross. But I'm inspired by it. What do you guys think here? UFO Bob. Hello. Hi. 821 Katayama. Anyone else that wants to raise their hand? We. We have an audience here on Discord. Let me know your thoughts right now. Or not. Yeah. The. The retail price, the go ahead. If you have something to add here, just cut me off. I. I do.

00:26:55 Katayama: And that is smell and taste is closely linked. And I'm wondering what it would be like if you could block your sense of smell. Why you drank that drink. Would it be better or worse?

00:27:16 John Daub: Seafood. This is the one I didn't want to drink. All right, That's interesting. All right. Now that I. I uncupped my nose, I. I can taste the seafood, which is nasty. It's like, you know what, UFO Bob? It's actually like butter seafood. That even makes it worse. It's like butter seafood taste. Now I can. I can. When I had my nose pinched though, very slight sweetness. But I think maybe that's some of the odors that came through. But almost no. Wow, you're right. I can't. If I pinch my nose, I cannot taste the sea, the butter seafood goodness at all. That is interesting. So you can tell that they absolutely have added in some sort of smell. Why would they do that? Why? Why? Because it's genius. It is genius, isn't it? I see Saya is here. Hey, Saya. Hey.

00:28:35 Saya: All I can say is after you said it smells like armpit, my appetite just went downhill. Yeah. No, thank you. No, thank you.

00:28:49 John Daub: Here you go. It's coming right your way. Some armpit live.

00:28:56 Saya: No, but like most, half of your taste comes from smell. So I don't know why they couldn't improve the smell on most of them. Because half of your taste is smell.

00:29:09 John Daub: I mean, I don't think they want to improve the smell. I think it is perfect the way it is. I think it has to smell bad for it to make an impact. This is limited edition. This isn't something that they. I can't get this at the convenience store. I can't just go someplace and buy this. This is actually. These boxes. I don't think they're going to be making these anymore. So you. You either Got them now or you didn't. So, yeah. You want to be your. You want to have your mind blown. My mind is blown. So I'm glad that they didn't make it taste smell better. It would. It would. It would be weird if it was.

00:29:43 Saya: So it's just a trend thing. One of those Japanese trend, quick and quick, get it up, get it sold, and go. That's it.

00:29:53 John Daub: You had me. I get it up. So the. The actual thing with this product is that they want to blow people's minds, and I think that they did. And you're never gonna see this again. They don't bring it back. This is so. This is so unlike the United States in many ways. A popular item doesn't just go away. At least it didn't when I was a kid. In Japan, they'll have something that you love. You absolutely love it. It goes crazy. It creates a. It's. I wouldn't even call it a buzz. What's larger than a buzz? Like mania? It's insane. And then they just take it away. People want more. You leave them wanting more. You leave them at the height. You don't leave them on the way down. And that's what they do with this stuff. And it's not available to the general public. You can't just. Well, it is, but only to the lucky few, which is a shame. Almost a waste. Right? How many of you, by show of hands, you can raise your hand right now. And we have a couple of other questions here. How many of you would try this if you were in Japan if you had the chance? So we have about 35 in the audience, and please join us on the Discord server if you want to chime in and listen on another venue here. So, 1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. So it's about 30% of the people would want to try this. Some hands went down. What? We're losing some hands here. There were 10 raised their hands in

00:31:21 Discord Caller: response to your question.

00:31:22 John Daub: All right, so it's about 30% of the people here. The Discord server is Discord GG. OnlyinJapan. One word. If you want to join us here and have a little discussion about this. This stuff here. Which one is my favorite? Can you even say that? Let me put these next to here. I'm not even gonna refill these glasses because I want to freak out Kanai here. Just look Cosmo 5. I mean, you can see the colors here. I drink all the tomato. Really gonna refill that.

00:31:57 Katayama: So, John, do you think Kanai would Try any of this.

00:32:07 John Daub: No, Absolutely.

00:32:09 Katayama: Okay.

00:32:09 John Daub: My decision is made.

00:32:10 Katayama: If. If it's not, can I.

00:32:11 John Daub: Approved. I'm staying away. Really? It's Okapi approved. No. Doesn't do it. I don't think I trust. Ok. Really? I. Yeah, I can see that. I do have a question about it. It's not official. Ok. There's no music. The gimbal died. O.

00:32:31 Katayama: The question is, John, is it worth 8,000 yen plus shipping to get from Japan to where I am?

00:32:39 John Daub: All right. Given that the original retail price is 3,000 yen. Yeah. And I paid about. I paid about 5,000 yen for this one. So I paid above retail to get it. Let me put it to. Let me. Let me just put it to you in a way maybe people can understand. Very few times, the older you get, the. I'm not blown away by stuff that much. When I was younger, I was blown away by things like that were just like, whoa. Right? There aren't so many situations in life, I guess, where you're just honestly blown away by something, all right? Whether it's something visually or something that you hear, because you've already heard and you've already tasted, you've already seen, you've already experienced so much in your life. The older you get, it's harder and harder for you to be blown away by something. But these types of things, they have the ability for an instant in your life to blow you away. Something that you've never experienced before in your entire life. If you put it in this perspective, it's worth the $80. It's probably worth even more than that. You don't have to be a fan of Cup Noodle. You just have to be somebody that might appreciate it and you might have had it before. And you will when you. When you do drink these things. I think I'm all right at first. I think this is gross. And on the surface, I could see why people would just not want to try this at all. And then there's. There's another part of my brain that is saying to itself, whoever did this as an artist, all right, whoever came up with the way to mix this and create something that smells the way it does, like an armpit, but tastes pretty special in a way that maybe I'm not going to want to drink it again, but it blew my mind. That's artistry. That's something really special. And I don't think you can put a price on that. I mean, I've had. We've all had Coca Cola. We've all had you know, iced tea, there's certain tastes that we know quite well. These are tastes that you will never, ever have in your entire life ever again. Maybe that's a good thing. But if you want to be blown away by something and something new, then this is definitely one of those things. And I love that Japan does this over and over again. The culture companies come up with the weirdest stuff, and you ask yourself, why would they do that? It's just because people want to be blown away. They want to try something that they've never done before. An experience that's just so bizarre. And a company can do that with their product. They do it here because that's creative, that's innovative. I don't think they do that in the United States because they're worried that it might be bad for their brand. Or maybe they're afraid to take that risk. I don't know why Coca Cola doesn't make Garlic Coke. I think make a limited edition for 10,000 bottles of garlic Coke, and that would be pretty amazing. People would be on social media trying it all the time. It would blow people's minds. But like, in Japan, they do that. They had Salty Watermelon Pepsi. It was weird. They had Cucumber Pepsi once. Pepsi is pretty innovative when it comes to soda, more so than Coca Cola. I've had all sorts of really weird drinks here, and everyone blows my mind. But I don't think I've ever been this blown away as this. And the more I think about it, the more I'm just appreciative of the artistry of making smells and making this. Even the texture is different. There's a little bit of a texture to some of these, which is gross when you think about it. But. Yeah. This seafood noodle. I will never buy this ever again. I don't. I don't know. Does that make you want to buy it? Peso? I don't. Peso's not even here. Don't know. Katayama. Am I just blowing smoke up people's rears? You are.

00:36:37 Katayama: You are piquing my interest slightly.

00:36:38 John Daub: I'm not considering. I just mounted up in my proxy warehouse, so. Ah, I could be a salesman. Nissan, hire me.

00:36:49 Katayama: Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Oh no.

00:36:56 John Daub: You can't just stop with oh, no, no, no, no. Why?

00:36:58 Katayama: Well, okay, so. So here's my thing, John. The taste is sweet. Correct me if I'm wrong. And if salty sweet. I get it some. The taste might be somewhat o. I. I don't know. I mean, this just takes it to a whole different, different arena. And I've eaten my share of ramen and in instant Mr. Cup of noodle, but I don't know if I ever would drink it. Just saying that. That's. That's it.

00:37:35 John Daub: Thanks. That's honest feedback. I appreciate that. You all know why we're going to need a lot of likes in order to get here. We need to get 500 likes. What I'm going to do right now is to mix. Mix these all up into one glass and then see if we can get something out of this. So the curry, the seafood, the regular cup noodle, and the chili tomato all in one glass. And I'm going to drink that. But we're going to need 500 likes. That's just. I think that's not too much bread. Downey is like, no. Well, look, someone's got to do this. All right. Someone's got to mix everyone. I knew I was gonna do this before I even started this. So I'm gonna like for science if you want to see. I can't even see how many we got. 400. It's crazy. All right, we're getting up there. I don't know. Sandgrass, Snod writes in here. Just a trophy.

00:38:36 Saya: All right.

00:38:37 John Daub: You know, I'm gonna do it anyways, but it's good to get the like. So once again, this is curry, cherry tomato, cup noodle and seafood mixed together like a mad scientist. We're gonna start. Do we need music for this here? I think we do. I think we do. What do we have here in my. On my music list Waiting for the likes, please. That's nice. Okay, let's go with Claim the Thrones, which is royalty free music. Adding curry. Wait, no. This is the curry. What was that? Oh, that's the armpit. This is the seafood noodles. Oh, I can smell all of it together. I don't want to drink this. I can smell the seafood and the curry and the tomato and the salty tomato and then the. There's armpit. So much more. Ah. That after flavor of curry is nasty. And then there's a lasting taste of tomato at the end. I'm not kidding. All right. Oh, my gosh. All right. It's almost like milk tea. It. It really. I. I don't. This does not look good. This looks like sewage. All right. If I put a piece of toilet paper in there, you would not know. I could describe to you the flavors. The. The seafood is. The butter. Seafood is just overpoweringly disgusting. All right. There's a twinge of the curry that starts like a. More of a masala and then the aftertaste is more of like Japanese curry. Taste that sticks with you longer. But the lasting flavor at the end the note. Can I even say it's the node. This does not look like Royal Milk Tea. Royal Milk Tea does not look like this. All right. The lasting note is tomato. That is. That in itself is interesting. So it seems like. And there's, there's. Throughout, there's a hint of armpit. So you have that. That's. That's the nasty factor. The rest of it is not too bad. It's just when you put them together, it really does blow your mind. I would not do that ever again. If you do order this and you find it, if you find it on sale, I, I do think you should try it out. I don't know. I seriously doubt they're gonna sell this at Don Quixote or something at convenience stores. I think it's one of these things that blows the Internet's mind. But, you know, they want to make a profit and things have been pretty bad. Cup Noodles been probably doing pretty good. People staying at home, selling a lot of it. I, I just don't know if they're gonna go to the next level and sell this mainstream because it's just, it's mind blowingly like what I, I can describe the taste all day long. I think we really need to try it. All right. We did get. We get 455 likes. That's pretty strong for, for our audience here. I'm a. I do like the cup noodle. It's kind of neat. It's. It's something you can eat on the run. I don't eat it every day. In fact, I think I might eat it three or four times a year. All right. I don't eat it very often at all. But every now and then they have a unique flavor like this one, which is the curry cheese and makes you want to try, try it and then you end up buying a few of them and then you end up liking it and then they pull it away. I don't know if curry cheese is going to be forever either. But in the end, I think that this is kind of neat to pay 50 bucks and to try it for live stream and kind of share this experience. I don't know if you can get this abroad. Just. You might want to try it anyways. Just out of a curiosity factor. But yeah, I, I don't know. What do you think? Are these people geniuses? Does Anybody agree with me? And we have some hands raised here. We have Cyren and Stephen W. 84 have their hands raised here. So, yeah, come on us and join us. And Belgrade here is. Is as well. Enjoy. Give me your thoughts. Try to keep it short, because we want to. I'm going to end this in a second because this is. My mind is blown. So just go ahead, Belgrade. Why don't you tell us your impressions here? Well, I was.

00:44:43 Discord Caller (Belgrade): Don't.

00:44:44 John Daub: It's not.

00:44:45 Belgrade: I don't know if that's a good idea right now, honestly.

00:44:50 John Daub: But I, I will say your reaction to that. I watched the live stream. Your reaction to that was priceless. I just want to say those reactions were real. All right. Oh, I, I. Yeah, I can bet on that. Absolutely. Yeah. That's the sad thing. Oh. I just want to also make sure.

00:45:13 Katayama: Are you okay?

00:45:15 John Daub: I'm gonna be fine. I. There's nothing dangerous. There's nothing dangerous about it. Oh, this spicy tomato says it has some basil in there. Ooh. I, I think it's just a shock. I've had a lot of shocks to the system. I've done the Naked Man Festival here where you, you know, you're in the. In the freezing cold and you're wearing a thong and running around mostly naked. Like, there's things in life that you try just because they're crazy and they make you feel alive, they make you feel something at the end of it. I felt really, like, alive. And I think I get this through taste here as well. I didn't drink the whole can. I think you drink, like 5% of it. But it does it woken my taste buds. And I don't think it'll ever be shocked like it was today, but they'll find a way, I'm sure. I was gonna say because it sounds alive, but the flavor, it spells dead. It sounds like. Well, they could have done worse. Yeah. I'm actually covering the glass so I don't have to smell it anymore. But it also raises it up so you can appreciate the artistry. And I do. And I don't know if anybody else if you agree with me. I do think that the makers of this are artists. I think they, they. I can see the scientists getting together and playing notes and trying to get the essence of it without grossing people out with the taste. They don't want people puking. I don't think you're gonna vomit from this. All right, maybe this one you might, but you're not supposed to mix them all together. But again, like, it's just an ex. For me, it's an experience. And I don't think you can. Like, it's only in, Only in Japan would this weird stuff be like, so popular. Maybe, I don't know. Would this, would this fly in the United States? Ramen soda? Like, what, Would people buy it? I don't know. Would it be positive? No, just like, just like regular cup noodle soda. Would people want to try this? And would, would this give the. The company a bad reputation or would it be something positive or what? You know, I'm. Are they afraid to do something crazy like this? I get a lot of questions for these companies that. Trying to innovate. Let's see here, we got Saran and Siren and Steven.

00:47:35 Discord Caller (Saya): Hey, can you hear me?

00:47:38 John Daub: Yes,

00:47:40 Saya: hi. Sorry about last time, by the way.

00:47:45 John Daub: Oh, it's all right.

00:47:48 Saya: I was wondering, is the cheese curry cup of noodles and the curry soda spicy?

00:48:04 John Daub: Have you ever had Japanese curry before?

00:48:08 Saya: No, I have not.

00:48:11 John Daub: It's not spicy. Japanese palates don't do well with spicy. So something that's really spicy is not spicy by my taste. As someone who grew up with spicy foods, there's a, like masala on its own is not really spicy. There's kind of a curry taste taste to it, but it's. It's hard to describe unless you've had Japanese curry. It's more balanced. It's not very spicy at all. There's a little bit of spice, but not enough. I think people that don't like spice probably would still be able to eat Japanese curry very well.

00:48:45 Saya: Okay. Because I'm not a big. I can't eat spicy food. Makes me sick.

00:48:53 John Daub: You might be able to eat this. I'm not. I. I like right now, but it's. It's hard. You're asking the wrong person. I'm somebody like, spicy foods have to be very spicy to make a spicy impact. It's not spicy. It's. It's one of the reasons also, I think because they want it to be kid friendly. A lot of kids can't eat spicy foods either here in Japan. So you'd be able to eat this.

00:49:20 Saya: Okay, thank you. Do you know where I could get the cup of noodles?

00:49:27 John Daub: No. Mitsuha supermarket in New York. And there's one in California, I think Amazon. Regards to the 50th anniversary editions, I'm happy to inform that they are being exported.

00:49:40 Katayama: I got the cheese curry, the. With the cheese powder one special down here.

00:49:48 John Daub: I. I remember it being cheesier, though. I don't know. I'LL have to add this extra cheese. Oh, it is pretty good though. Very good. Anybody else here? We got Chan, who's in a trunk? Stephen, do we hear from Steve? Hey.

00:50:10 Discord Caller (Stephen): Hey, John.

00:50:10 John Daub: How's it going? Going? It's okay.

00:50:18 Stephen: That explains it all. So I was just kind of thinking about and I think you said kind of the main thing I was looking at, I feel like especially for the Japanese market, are kind of more curious, adventurous and open to new things. Maybe not so much in say, a U.S. market, you know, for a product like that, I could just see it being a very small niche audience. Like I don't see, say your Walmart or, you know, down in Texas we have Heb. Your major grocery chains selling stuff like that. Maybe some areas that may have like small little mom and pop grocery stores maybe. But I guess kind of as a follow up to that, do you see the Japanese palette being, say, more adventurous and open to trying the weird, the new, the different than say, an American or Eastern crowd? Because if you take McDonald's for example, you go to a McDonald's in the US it's pretty much going to be the same McDonald's five years ago, and it's pretty much going to be the same McDonald's five years from now. Maybe a few small changes here and there, but pretty much the exact same thing. In Japan, you can go to McDonald's once a month and everything's completely different.

00:51:52 John Daub: Yeah, they Japanese companies have to innovate. If they don't, then they're seen publicly as, I don't know, a boring company. People will lose interest very quickly if you don't have something interesting on the menu, if you don't vary it. They want the cure. People are curious. Here in Japan, people every day want to try something new. Maybe their daily lives are very one baton, which is a monotonous one pattern. So they want to try new things in their lives that inspire them. And companies know this and the companies themselves, I'm going to be honest with you. How do you, how do you work at McDonald's and stay inspired serving the same menu over and over every day? I would be bored out of my mind. Here in McDonald's Japan, they have new products all the time, meaning that the staff is constantly engaged to make these new colors, these new types of buns, new types of toppings on top of it. To me, that would probably love my job a lot more if it was constantly changing like this. I don't understand. I can't think of too many American companies with food that have been really, really inventively creative. Onto the weird. In the age of Instagram and social media and the way we live today, this just makes a lot of sense. I probably. I wouldn't be doing this live stream unless there was a weird. You know, Ramen soda. That's the name of the title. A lot of YouTubers in Japan have done this as well. And every time something weird comes out, like adult cream pie at McDonald's, every single YouTuber, you know, goes over there and publicizes it and wants to try it out. And it's really exciting, and it has its day. It's great, free PR for the company, and then it's over. So I don't understand why. I think when we talk about the market, I think the market is there. I think there are people that will try this. But I think that a lot of companies are afraid that it might hurt their brand in the long run. Where in Japan it. If they don't do it, then it hurts their brand for not being inventive. Nobody here in Japan is looking down on cup noodle for Nissan for making these drinks. There are a lot of people are just inspired. They're going, this is weird. But no one is saying that this is bad. Just different cultures and the different ways to see things. But again, like daily life in Japan, this is a hyper generalization. But, you know, people kind of dress the same in Japan. They kind of look the same. When I'm on the subway, yeah, everybody looks different. Their faces are different, but they all have the same kind of suits. They all walk the same way. They all kind of move the same way. It can feel a little bit boring in Tokyo if you're an office worker or you're doing a job where everything is very monotonous, pushing paper. That's why in your life, you probably want to be more inventive. In America, everybody's freaking different. It's kind of in itself pretty exciting when I go home and I see all these different kinds of people with different kinds of clothing, different kinds of walk and talk. To me, that's one of the things that I miss and love about America is how diverse it is with the people. So maybe Japan makes up for it in the diversity of flavors or the diversity of food. There's a balance to the way that life works here that's different. And maybe that balance requires companies to innovate and keep people engaged and interested. But in this age, over the last five, ten years of social media, I can see why Japan's way of doing this weird stuff should be more attractive to the west than it is already. So I think the market for this kind of weirdness is only going to expand abroad.

00:55:28 Saya: But

00:55:30 John Daub: I don't know. I think every Instagrammer would want to have one of these photos on their. On their page. Trying it, making the space. It's all about trying new experiences. Now. If you've had Coca Cola once, Japan

00:55:44 Discord Caller (Scotty): has an interesting, you know, two aspects to it where the old culture and all these traditions that would be there forever or for a long time. And then you have the young people coming up and they're creating these new things and it's innovation, but I think there's a bit of resistance there as well to sell a lot of that.

00:56:09 John Daub: Anybody else have any comments that they want to make before we. I end this live stream here? If we have any more hand raised, come on in and join us.

00:56:19 Scotty: Just one question. Would those sodas be okay, open in a confined space? That is a chunk.

00:56:27 John Daub: How much space do you have in there? What else do you have in that trunk, though? Not much really.

00:56:34 Scotty: I'm making room for your poster.

00:56:36 John Daub: Well, the good thing with these is that they have a pretty long shelf life. So. Yeah. So you can keep these in the trunk until February of 2022. Yeah, they're all February.

00:56:53 Scotty: You had to have lost. Stuck in here for that long.

00:56:55 John Daub: Yeah. You have hot water? Maybe not. Hey there, everybody.

00:57:02 Discord Caller (Milk Tea): I just want.

00:57:04 Katayama: I just wanted to say that, I don't know. Carbureted soup.

00:57:15 Saya: I'm.

00:57:16 Katayama: I'm. It's. It's a bit weird. I'm not a big, huge fan of the carbureted stuff, but I'd be willing to give it a go.

00:57:31 John Daub: That's good. I think it's. I think, you know, in life there's the people who don't want to try anything new, then there's the people that will embrace, you know, something that's really new and it just depends on the type of person you are. I used to love. I love carbonated drinks. And I was drinking Coca Cola and Sprite and all of these soft drinks that are loaded with sugar. And then I realized this. Alexander. I just liked the carbonation. I didn't even care about the sugar, so I just drank carbonated water. Now. I drink carbonated water a lot. That's what's in my refrigerator now. So even for beer, I just like the carbonation. So I can drink a carbonated water and I'm pretty content with a little bit of lemon or something in there. But this Is a flavor. When it comes to flavor though, this is on another level. And yeah, they're sweet, but they're mildly sweet. It wasn't like it was overpowering sweet like, like Coca Cola or an American drink. It's very subdued where I think this, if it was too sweet, they wouldn't have the tomato taste. Probably wouldn't come as come out as much but because they, they subdued the sweetness. But it's there. You could taste the tomato and. Oh yeah, you could taste the tomato and the basil. It's weird. Who we got here? Scotty.

00:58:47 Discord Caller (Scotty): Hey, John.

00:58:47 Discord Caller (Milk Tea): Scotty here. This totally reminds me of Budweiser.

00:58:54 Scotty: Makes a drink called a Clemato.

00:58:57 Milk Tea: It's a beer with clam broth and tomato juice and it's kind of disgusting. But it's been around for a very long time and I've tried it and once was enough for me. But I guess it's an acquired taste.

00:59:11 Scotty: But that's totally what this reminded me of.

00:59:14 John Daub: That's pretty genius. I'm surprised that it's been around for a while because it was not a popular thing. You would just pull it and then come up with a new flavor, come up with another way to freak people out to try it one more time. I guess they found a way to build an audience with that, that they kept it around for a while. But that's the thing I didn't understand. I don't understand about the US Market. When something is popular or something is not popular. I don't know why. They just keep things around for too long. They don't, they don't change it up a little bit. I would, I would pull stuff up and then bring it back. I remember the McDonald's used to have the McRib sandwich back in the 80s. This was like this is a limited time offer thing that they would have every now and then and it would. People would go crazy when the McRib came back every five years like Haley's Comet or something. Everyone would, would flock for McRib. I don't think it's as popular now. I think it was a sauce that was so good, but yeah. Any last comments from our moderators here? I think we have one more milk. Is that you milk tea?

01:00:14 Katayama: No, John, we have one other person except here.

01:00:20 John Daub: I'm good for one more last question. Curbs buns.

01:00:30 Discord Caller (Milk Tea): Well, John, thanks for inviting us to your stream. Well, I just want to say like a lot of the I think culture and I'm from California, sometimes I feel like they try new things so I heard, I think it was Scotty who mentioned the Clamato. It's like, probably part of the, you know, Spanish drink. Spanish, you know, it's not the greatest drink, but I think they try to incorporate into American culture, and it's great to see different cultures being same thing to American types of food. So seeing part of, like, my Spanish type of foods being incorporated in American cultures, you know, it's very great to see it, you know, such a great, you know, American brand, you know, into drinks. But I just want to say that I think part of the American audience and customers, it's trying to go into different types of cultures, into their foods, into their drinks. I don't know. That's something I'd want to say. It's good to see the US Culture.

01:01:31 John Daub: Yeah, I agree. I think with the US the diversity is in its people and all of the different kinds of cultures. Again, my mom coming from India, even my grandparents on my father's side were from Germany and England and even probably a lot deeper. And it's nice to see that in the products, too. Here in Japan, I guess they just go weird on another level because we don't have that kind of diversity. It's like 99.9% Japanese, and then there's, you know, mixed of like, people like me here. So I, I, maybe we see that in the products, but I think that's a, that, that's pretty cool. When I go back home, you know, we think about what kind of cuisine we want. Mostly here in Japan, I eat Japanese food, so, So I, I can't even imagine what is American food besides burgers and, and, and pizza, which is from Italy. Burgers maybe coming from Europe originally, just kind of brought into America and made American. So maybe we do that with Japan here a little bit too. But the diversity of America is just so special. And yeah, the Clamato, I've never had that before. I don't even think it existed when I was. Maybe it did when I was in the US in 1998 after I left. I really haven't been exposed to much of the. Much of the culture since then. I ended in, like, the Friends and Seinfeld era. Gumbo? Yeah. Brisket. It's awesome. Good stuff. Thanks so much for watching. We did keep this on for an hour, and I'm glad that you could join me because Kanai is not here and be a lot. It's a lot more special with people here. But my winner is probably gonna have to be this one here. The curry. There's just something that, that reminds me of Thumbs up, which is an Indian drink, but it's thumbs up times 100% more curry curry in it, which would probably be just like full curry. But there's something pleasing about that curry in the, in the carbonated water. I think if you get a little bit of masala, I don't know if you have this available. Just get a little bit of masala and put a pinch in stuff. It gives you a little bit of a bite, a little bit. It's not a spiciness but it's a little bit of a spice. Like cinnamon is spicy, is a spice, but it's not spicy. I think curry is not spicy but there's spices in it. That's that give it the curry taste. Those spices are really refreshing. So put a little masala in your beer or masala and I've had that before, masala, beer, a little bit of masala in your carbonated water or your Coca Cola and it gives it a very, I don't know, like a really special taste to it that I, I got from this one. So this wasn't so mind blowing to me. Although the curry taste is pretty, pretty strong. Don't try to mix them all together just for your own health, it seems like. Thanks so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed this. And historically this is probably the weirdest live stream I ever do so. Although I did buy cuddle pillows. I bought a pillow the shape of a woman's lap and I did try that out at home. That's like, I think it was like three, four years ago. That's a weird one on only in Japan. Go just check out the archives. There's some weird stuff here. I'll have to make a playlist of the of the bazaar. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. I will scout that out. I'm working on a new episode with Eric Berg. Eric serves six from Asakusa. As we go through all the street food there that'll be, I think it'll be able to debut next week and a bunch of other stuff coming up as well as the Kickstarter fireworks project which is 100 funded but keep funding it because the, the more funds we get in, the longer the festival gets now and that's really important. And then we're going to start a stretch goal which is a second fireworks project with Shakudama and the big fireworks like we did last year because of the wild support that we received. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you in the next live stream probably tomorrow. Kanai, if you see this in playback, I am so sorry. And just be happy that you were not here, because this was. You know. I have to get rid of the smell out of the apartment. The Beatles. We love these weird things. Cheesecake in a tin example. Exactly. Somebody just showed me that there was cheesecake in a can down in Shibuya, and I should go and check that out. There's a bunch of other weird stuff I'm going to show you next month when the state of emergency ends and I can travel more freely. I'm going to have to Febreze this entire room. I might. I might have to burn some toast. That's the best way to hide it. But these are gonna go in the refrigerator, so she'll be surprised in another way. See, everybody, I know the smell of armpit. I don't think I have to hide that. It's sort of just a natural smell that I have at the end of the day. Anyways. No, it's not true. I smell pretty good. As far as you know. See you later.