Apparently working from the curious assumption that coffee should be a refreshing jangle rather than a muddy, hostile punch in the mouth, Nescafe recently started selling Sparkling Cafe: coffee plus carbonation. Generations of European philosophers are jittering in their graves.

Let me stress that it is not a coffee cola. There is no cola involved. It's just you against the combined unpleasantness of coffee and carbonic acid, and your only defense is the unseemly amount of sweetening Nescafe threw in there.

No, I do not like Sparkling Cafe, but nor do I blame them for trying. Japan's beverage industry seems to be experiencing a minor boom in carbonation right now. Coca-Cola, for example, carbonated active diet to make Freestyle.

Coca-Cola are also doing their best, via a "Coke, Please!" campaign, to get Japan using their brand name instead of just the generic "cola" when ordering drinks. So far, they have not succeeded, even after reviving a commercial song they last used in the sixties: Sukatto sawayaka Coca-Cola, or "Clear, refreshing Coca-cola." (Not exactly Sondheim, but an improvement on the previous jingle, "Coca-Cola, the suspicious foreign drink that burns.")

Plus, the slogan "Coke, please!" makes me imagine ODB endorsing Pepsi. "Coke, please!"