Sure, it might seem weird to call a drink "sweat," but it's just a sports drink. I saw a commercial for Pocari Sweat that said "it has composition similar to body fluid, so it is absorbed quickly" to rehydrate you. That's where it gets the name sweat. Those of us in the states will be familiar with Gatorate's marketing of their electrolytes - same concept, fancier name.

In the taste department, Pocari Sweat is actually one of my favorite sports drink. It only comes in one flavor, which tastes like Gatorade glacier blast or whatever the white flavor is. The flavor doesn't really taste like any fruit I can think of - it's very neutral. Not too sweet, and refreshing. Even though it's an internet weird drink legend, it's actually nothing special.

There are versions from China, Korea, and Japan, and it's spreading! The commercial I mentioned above was on Etihad Airlines flying to Abu Dhabi. I don't know if it's spreading because of the name, or despite of it. But I would choose this over Gatorade or Powerade any day.  I'm curious to see if they are going to come out with any more flavors.

If you get a chance, definitely try this drink. It's delicious, but one can will be enough. If you're thirsty for other Nostalgia drinks, also check out Shikhye.

Crushed Strawberry Drink is another crushed-fruit drink from Korea. It smells like one of my favorite candies of all time - the hard candy with liquid filling where the wrapper is designed to look like a strawberry. I'm sure at least some readers know what candy I'm talking about.

The juice itself doesn't taste as good as it smells though - it's a really sweet, flat strawberry flavor. My first instinct was right, and it does taste like the liquid inside of that strawberry candy. The thing that makes this a weird drink though is that it has little chunks of strawberry floating around in it. Most people are used to orange juice having pulp, but not strawberry pulp.

Actually, how many of you have even drank strawberry juice at all? I've seen it blended into smoothies, but I never thought of it as a good juicin' fruit. The strawberry pulp is less like crushed strawberry than strawberry shreds. You can feel them when you drink it, but only if you're paying attention. We're not talking chewable strawberry chunks here people.

To be honest, I didn't have high expectations for this Korean crushed strawberry drink when I picked it up in a store in China. It lived up to my expectations exactly. It comes in a small can like a lot of Korean soft drinks, and it's the perfect size.  It's good for a tasting of an interesting flavor, but it's not particularly refreshing and I probably wouldn't want to drink a lot of it.

I was excited to try out the newest (or oldest?) variety of PBR, but I had to put it in the fridge to chill first. It is indeed black, with a tan foam. Not very heavily carbonated, and not heavy at all. It's got a little bit of a darker flavor than regular PBR, but a little sour and nothing like a stout. It's not great as far as beers go, but it is drinkable if you're accustomed to drinking Chinese beers (a.k.a. you have lowered standards). It's got around 4.5% alcohol according to the label.

The can says 蓝带黑啤 (lan2 dai4 hei1 pi2), which means Blue Ribbon Black Beer. It also has at the bottom an official-looking long company name at the bottom of the can, and it does even say 蓝带啤酒 （lan2 dai4 pi2 jiu3) in the small print, but that's weird to have two different company names. I can't find it on the <a href="http://www.blueribbon-beer.com/bencandy.php?fid=26&id=62">Pabst China website</a> either, so it looks like we're dealing with a fake here.

It even has the Pabst seal on the can

Can any readers confirm or deny whether this is actually sold/endorsed by Pabst Blue Ribbon?

Actually, I can't find anywhere on the label that would indicate how much alcohol it has. This leads me to question whether it's a beer or even alcoholic at all, despite being labeled as such and put in the beer section of the grocery store.

It tastes just like it smells. If you've tried any kind of lychee candy or lychee jelly it pretty much tastes like that. There's not a hint of beer flavor, and it's very very sweet. It's a little artificial-tasting, but not nearly as bad as the 1 yuan blackcurrant soda.

This particular brand of lychee beer is called Lan Bei Lychee Taste. I got it in a grocery store in Beijing, china.

When I was a kid, I would mix milk with coke and other sodas, to make a kind of cream soda / melted ice cream float kind of drink. It was good, but you had to drink it fast because as I found out, soda and milk don't mix. To prove me wrong, someone finally figured out how to mix milk and soda, and they called it Milkis.

Milkis is a milk soda from Korea made by Lotte described on the label as "New feeling of soda beverage." Milkis tastes a lot like cream soda or Sprite mixed with cream. And even though it's not alcoholic, it tastes kindof like the milk beer I had in Beijing. It's really refreshing, cooling taste. Maybe it also tastes like a melted slushy. Whatever the milky taste reminds you of, I recommend it.

When I was a kid growing up I hated asparagus. We had it growing in our garden and my mom would make it steamed about once a week and force everyone to eat it. It wasn't until I started to like dipping it in horseradish that it became edible. While it's ok in limited portions these days, asparagus will not show up on my plate unless it's  a free side at a restaurant that I don't know about.

So, I don't know that they were thinking when they decided to squeeze the juice out of (what seems like) a very un-juicy vegetable to make asparagus juice. But it's China, the land of peanut juice and corn juice, not to mention Jew's ear juice, so what can I say?

The asparagus juice (芦笋汁 lu2 sun3 zhi1) came in a juicebox probably to deliberately obscure the sight of what I thought was going to be a nasty green liquid. It turned out completely unexpectedly that it's clear juice.

And actually it doesn't taste that bad!

It strangely reminds me of Capri Sun and honeysuckle juice, finished off with asparagus. It doesn't even have a bad aftertaste like normal asparagus does. It's kindof refreshing, but not really. The thing is, which I found out after reading the label, it's mostly sugar water, with only 10% real asparagus juice. If you drink it quickly, you can't even taste the asparagus at all.

After doing some research as I usually do out of curiosity, I think this juice is made (at least partially) with Black Galingale or Galangal, a.k.a. blue ginger, a root in the ginger family that is used often in traditional asian medicines. I am able to recognize the first two characters on the label as Kha, meaning galanggal, but my Thai is not so good to be able to recognize the rest. If you can read Thai, please help me out and leave a full translation in the comments. Also, if you've tried this juice I'd like to know what you think.

This is a really good drink from Korea. It tastes sweet just like fruit punch should taste. The flavor reminds me of drinking Juicy Juice when I was a kid, and just like that delicious children's beverage, I have no clue what kind of fruits or berries actually went into making Pok Pun Ja. The only downside is that it comes in a really small bottle, like a lot of other Korean drinks.

I was in the mood for spiked coffee, so I figured I'd go with something new rather than the usual Irish coffee. I'd never heard of Indian coffee before, and it sounded interesting so I went with it. It was a choice that let me to discovering the weirdest coffee I have ever seen.

The waitress said it's coffee, plus Bacardi white rum and egg. I thought that the egg would be mixed in somehow, but it came and there are some kind of flakes floating around that I guess are the egg whites or some part of them. When I went to stir it, I discovered a whole egg yolk sitting at the bottom. Needless to say, I was a little surprised.

The coffee itself is just a pretty mild coffee with the rum coming through a little bit. It's not too strong in bitterness or alcohol.

I thought that the yolk was hard-boiled, but I bit into it and it popped, spilling yolk all into the coffee! They must have put it in there raw. The whole coffee is now a yellowish light brown or golden color. It actually didn't even change the taste much though, just made it a little more bitter. Toward the bottom of the cup though, it did start to taste distinctly eggy.

Even though I'm not sure that the egg was necessary, after adding some milk and sugar this Indian coffee turned out to be really good and one of the weirdest coffees I've had so far. Toward the end of the glass there was a higher concentration of egg yolk because it had all settled to the bottom. I was a little turned off by the chunks in the bottom, similar to the bottom of the yak milk tea, but in both cases it didn't ruin the rest of the drink.

I haven't been to India yet, but when I do, I will order a coffee there and see if it's the same. Do they actually drink coffee like this in India?