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On the way to my grandma’s house in Irvine, we stopped in Gardena to get some shopping done at Marukai. Thanks to Jeidai’s younger brother, both my brother and I became interested in Japanese fruit-flavored drinks, like…Calpis* for example, a drink that comes in different flavors (strawberry, lychee and original flavor, just to name a few). It’s mixed with some kind of dried milk, which gives it the opaque appearance. It actually tastes pretty good.

*Calpis is what it’s called in Japan, but because of what it sounds like in the English language, it was renamed to Calpico in the US. But my siblings, cousins and I like calling it Calpis because we’re just like that.

So when we went to Marukai today, not only did said brother and I got get (typed this up in the car and apparently, paid little attention to grammer) two large bottles of Calpis, we decided to try something different, and we each got a bottle of Ramune. Unlike Calpis, Ramune has no milk and is carbonated like soda.

And unlike Calpis, Ramune comes in a funky-shaped glass bottle. There’s plastic wrapping at the top, and once you remove the wrapping, the plunger (the green plastic bottle top-looking thing) comes off immediately, not being attached to the actual bottle top. As for the bottle top, the only thing that’s blocking the drink from coming out is a glass marble stuck in the top. And the way to remove the marble is to place the plunger on the bottle top and press down on it until you hear a low pop (the instructions say to use your palm, but through experimentation, we’ve found that it’s easier to use your thumb). It usually takes a lot of upper body strength just to pop the marble and when I couldn’t do it and my brother couldn’t do it, my dad managed to do it.

(As I’ve told my mom, this is the only drink I’ve seen where instructions are needed to open the bottle.)

Once you’re done drinking it, you’ve got yourself a funky glass bottle with a glass marble inside.