Ice Cream is pretty cool, ish

In this country, they have many delicious snack foods that I quickly get obsessed with. They also rotate flavors seasonally, or randomly it sometimes seems. A couple of months ago, I stopped at my local conbini Family Mart to grab my favorite ice cream snack at the time, a crunchy banana chocolate ice cream popsicle thing. Unfortunately, the season had ended for those, I haven't seen the banana flavor since, only normal vanilla, and last week coffee. Delicious! but I digress.

Since they didn't have what I wanted, I was left with a hard decision, forgo the ice cream or get something else. I thought long and hard about it for about 3 seconds and decided to get something else.

When Steve and I were in Kyoto in the spring, he bought ice cream that you "drink" that I remembered thinking wasn't bad. There it was, sitting in the cooler in a tasty looking Cappuccino flavor. I decided to try it out.

Behold, the tasty treat: Coolish!

Mmm, coffee flavored frosty

What in the world is Coolish you ask? A very good question. The packaging calls it "飲むアイス" or ice cream drink. Drinkable ice cream. When you get it, you have to let it melt a little bit, and then you suck it up through the nozzle at the top of the package. If you don't let it thaw out a little bit, you will give yourself a massive headache and a sore jaw, and still not to get to eat (drink?) it until it thaws. Be careful!

Coolish is not technically ice cream. It's what some people call milk ice. It's like milk with tons and tons of tiny pieces of ice in it. Basically, it's a frosty in packet form. As a former Wendy's employee, frequent Wendy's eater when in America, and avid Wendy's misser (is that a word?) when in Japan, I was filled with joy at this discovery! Plus, since it's milk ice, not ice cream, it's fewer calories. Nice!

Obviously, I have quickly become obsessed with Coolish, especially now that it's getting so darn hot and humid here. Of course, in typical Japanese flavor fashion, there are 2 flavors of Coolish at a time. Vanilla, and whatever the flavor of the moment is. Sometimes if you visit stores like Wellness or grocery stores, they haven't sold out of all of the previous flavor yet, so you have a choice of 3 flavors! Lucky!

That's how I got to sample the Belgian chocolate flavor. It was out before Cappucino, but I found one hidden in with the Cappucino flavor at Yayoi (a local grocery store.)

It was a rich chocolate flavor. Not my favorite, but not bad.

One day, I went to get a Cappuccino Coolish and was sad to discover they were gone, replaced by the next flavor, Strawberry yogurt. True to it's name, the consistency was a little more yogurty, and it tasted like yogurt. As in a yogurt cup that was frozen, not frozen yogurt. There's a difference. I wasn't a fan.

If I wanted yogurt, I'd buy yogurt! I want ice cream darnit!

The next time I wanted Coolish, they still had the disappointing yogurt flavor, so I decided to try the original vanilla flavor that's always available. It was basically vanilla soft serve. Pretty good, nothing special.

Vanilla, always a classic.

Anyway, you can imagine the joy I felt when I walked in to Family Mart and discovered the newest flavor this week. Perfect for summer, it's Soda flavored Coolish!

Who decided soda is the color of windshield wiper fluid?

This blue soda flavor is pretty popular in Japan. There are lots of soda flavored candies, soda flavored soda, soda flavored I don't know what. I'm not really sure what soda flavor actually tastes like... It's kind of like Sprite but not so lemon lime. Maybe it's like cream soda? It's no cappuccino, but it's pretty tasty. And it's that fabulous blue color that makes me feel like I'm five again. The perfect summer treat!