Part of this Complete Breakfast

On the recommendation of one Cameron Bertram, I decided to pick up a can of Morinaga's ホットケーキ味, "Hot Cake Flavor." Don't spend too long looking for hidden meaning here, it's a pancake-flavored beverage.

Photo by Ailsa Lian, featuring famed hand model Cameron Bertram

Even after more than a year here in Japan, I feel that I have a duty to readers back home to explore the weird, the unknown, and the culturally impenetrable so as to promote cross-culture understanding. May I just say, having fulfilled my duty in this venture: damn every one of you, readers, I will never forgive your ass for this.

On the bright side, now I get to indulge in my favorite part of food criticism: rampant hyperbole!

Recreation of the official Gaijin Patrol taste test of Hot Cake Flavor.

I will confess to some trepidation as I dropped my ￥120 into the vending machine, the same Dydo machine by our house that sells Ultraman Cola ("Hot Cake Flavor" is elusive, appearing only in vending machines and even then only in a single brand of machine -- this really should have tipped me off that it would not be a taste sensation). Still, some forays into non-traditional beverages have been illuminating, even tasty: Jones Bros. Thanksgiving Sodas, for example, or Jarritos Tamarind Soda. The label promises "milk sake" -- anything beyond that is a riddle to me, though Cameron warned me that the label instructs one to yell "Reveal your tasty secrets to me" before drinking for maximum satisfaction.

On tasting, the first flavor is one of totally mega nasty gross, followed by a lingering taste of oh my god I'm gonna barf, with notes of vanilla extract and artificial maple. The best thing you can say about it is that this beverage did not make any of my teeth fall out; second-best would be that it tastes something like cold, runny butterscotch pudding. Not only did this drink kill a good number of my taste buds, but my tongue is now haunted by their restless ghosts and the surviving buds are swearing revenge against the brain. It's so bad that my eyes no longer blink in unison. It's so bad that I can no longer remember junior year of high school. With every sip, a dozen puppies around the world have seizures. With every sip, George Lucas destroys another copy of the original cut of "Star Wars." It's not great, is what I'm trying to say.

I was unable to complete the official Gaijin Patrol Taste Test of "Hot Cake Flavor," and for that I would like to apologize; like a coward not deserving of a place among the honored dead in Stova Core, I fled the testing grounds and dumped the remainder of the foul brew onto a patch of grass. That grass is now dead. If anything ever grows in that place again, it will be a blackened, hellish, Lovecraftian thing with thorns and tentacles. Though it should be noted that "Hot Cake Flavor" does, inexplicably, contain Vitamin C.

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