As a child, I was notoriously picky with my food.  On top of being a vegetarian, I was allergic to food items that I’m pretty sure my doctor made up just to wreak havoc on my eating-based social life.

I hated anything with bubbles, and on Jewish holidays, all types of rising bread. Needless to say, I was rolicking good fun at a dinner table. I was the life of the party at most evening meals because I would start to get sleepy, and then I’d get loopy, and then I’d get crazy, and then I’d crash, usually somewhere between my green beans and my tomato sauce pasta (true story, everybody).

One thing violated my hard-and-fast rules: Japanese sodas. I couldn’t stand soda. The ideas of the bubbles throwing a rave dance party in my nose and then squirting out like the bloody Trevi fountain, made me bullet-sweating-ly nervous. God knew I didn’t need to have any more unidentified foreign objects falling out of those particular cavities. So it came as a surprise to all when I got into the sodas, especially the ones with the marbles, wherein a little glass marble rolls around while the liquid you’re drinking (and hopefully not spilling down the front of your shirt) rushes past said glassy ball.

Because this is a blog post and not Ulysses (though I wouldn’t blame you for being fooled, thanks to these spiffy writing skills), I’m not going to go into detail about the sodas, in spite of the fact that this is by all accounts a food-related blog. Japanese sodas are simply the best.

You’ve got your sodas that have the word ‘sweat’ in the name, the ones that come with drawings of astrological signs on the front, fizzy sodas, lemon sodas, and the ones that are more gel than drink. They’re all worth trying. You should spend at least one afternoon of your life trying to get the marble out of the bottle (hint: use a lighter).  In fact, that would be a good project for seventh grade science.