Japan, weird. But not as weird as you might think...

My screwed up back has been met with an equivalent degradation in diet, resulting in my persuing the local 7-11 to see what looks good/new/strange.

From 2009-03-24

Can you see it? Look again...

From 2009-03-24

Not the best picture, apologies, but that's coffee with caramel, butter and salt.

CARAMEL. BUTTER. SALT.

Now, I'd heard of tibetan butter tea, because I've read entirely too much about Tibetan buddhism/mysticism, but butter in coffee? With salt? And caramel?

To the internets!

Apparently, coffee with salt is not unheard of, and used to be used quite a bit to take the bitterness and edge off of bad coffee. I'd bet that the Japanese concept of salt and coffee probably has more to do with Taiwan's recent experience/popularity with it.

Coffee with butter is apparently an old school Singapore way to drink it.

And the godfathers of coffee in Ethiopia also apparently also sometimes use butter, or spiced butter and salt in their coffee.

I've got to say though, the caramel-salt-butter combo appears to be all Japan.

And I'll say this... it was good. You could really taste the richness of the butter, which flowed into the sweetness of the caramel with the slight sharpness of the salt. I would knock it for not being able to really taste the coffee part though.

[You know, given my horrible Japanese, is this even coffee? I assumed... it was with the other coffee drinks, but sometimes they lump the coffees/teas together... You know, I should really study this damn language.]

And yeah, it's not really even butter, caramel or salt, but just the frankenfood-freakshow-artificially-designed-in-a-lab flavors... but they were pretty spot on. The butter flavor in particular.

I really gotta stop eating/drinking this crap though... But if you are gonna indulge in something completely horrible for you... this was tasty.