I had never drunk pumpkin in my life before today. I wonder if anybody else has? If you’ve spent any time in Japan there’s a good chance you’ve eaten a fair bit of it, both savory and sweet. You may have had it in ice cream, you may have had good old Pumpkin Pie (though that’s surely more American), or you may have had Pumpkin Purin.

Have you drunk it though?

From the front art it’s pretty hard to tell this is a Pumpkin drink, though if you look top right you’ll see the green lid of a pumpkin. The Japanese typically eat green pumpkins. Do we also eat green pumpkins? Here they only use the orange ones for display, they’re not that easy to find and buy. I bought ours from a supermarket- it was on display, had already been inked with a scary face, and I negotiated with them for it for 1,000 yen. SY made us a great pie out of it.

The titling says Soft Pumpkin Custard Pudding Sweet Vegetable Drink, plus something about caramel.



Here’ the back.

Here you can better see the pumpkin chunks. I know you’re looking at them and thinking you’d like to drink them. Put them in a blender and drink them down. Of course you are.

Here it is, decanted. It looked a little goopy, and I didn’t much fancy drinking it. Very little scent. I’m sure it’s gone already from most convenience stores- probably it was just on release in time for Halloween, when everyone goes bat-shit crazy for pumpkins.

The taste in the end was very mild. Since eating SY’s pumpkin pie I have a pretty good idea of what pumpkin should taste like, and it’s not what this drink tasted like. All I could get was the bitter tang of caramel- pretty typical of Japanese purin (custard pudding).

Until next Halloween, then…

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