Japan Navigator

This is not an advertisement for milk cacao drinks from Bourbon - although the contents of this small bottle tasted not bad. No, when buying this plastic bottle with a hot beverage in it, I was reminded of the fact that Japan is perhaps the only country in the world where hot beverages are sold in cans and plastic bottles from vending machines (and the special hot cabinets you find in convenience stores).

The first hot drinks were sold from vending machines in 1973 - after Nagoya food company Pokka had developed the necessary technology. That were only cans, but the problem with cans is that fresh from the machine they are often too hot to handle. Ordinary pet bottles were no solution as they are not completely air tight and therefore the taste would be spoiled. Ito En solved this problem in 2000 by developing a new hard plastic bottle especially for hot drinks - here no oxygen can leak through and the quality of the taste is assured. Since then, hot drinks in bottles have become very common in Japan, but as I said at the start, although you never think about it in this super-convenient country, do they exist anywhere else?