Hey, pretty! The package/product matching is indeed keen!

I like to imagine that you take all your pictures with your keitai. I am not sure why I think that, but it makes them cuter.

I could never really get into shochu and related drinks and I lived in Kagoshima. The kids (we were in high school, so, yes, kids) I was drinking with seemed real fond of their chuhai, but whatever, I don't like soda either, so it was just not my bag.

I drank this the other day but didn't notice any difference between normal Ebisu.
Yona Yona Ale is still the true maneuver.

Wait shouldn't I call it "Yebisu" even though you don't pronounce the Y.

Also ヱビス？

Calling on "No Sword" to explain to me why the "we" (ヱ) katakana is supposed to be read "ye" in this case. You get ten points for including the Manyogana extra vowels into the explanation.

You are making me look forward to being in Japan for oshogatsu. Maybe I'll pick up some Red for the annual channel-skip-between-K1-and-PRIDE-tournaments tradition that I've got going. What's the hot seasonal otsumami this year?

The Ya Yo Yu line also used to include Ye, and people got tired of pronouncing that particular dipthong for some reason. Now the dead katakana survives only in the trademarked name of a beer company. What do you think the editors of the manyoshu would have made of the concept of trademarks?

By the way, I tried Hoppy once for the first time a couple of months ago when I was out drinking with a Japanese friend of mine. I was surprised to find that it's actually not bad. Sure tastes better than happoshu.

"The Ya Yo Yu line also used to include Ye, and people got tired of pronouncing that particular dipthong for some reason."

This is not quite accurate. The y-line never had its own katakana/hiragana. The w-line did. By all cases, ヱビス should be "webisu."

Was there ever a Wu?
(I heard they're bringing back the Wii)

No Wu. Ever. (Sorry, GZA.)

By the way, the red beer is 琥珀 (kohaku) - amber.

Inebriated taste-buds on the fritz, I guess. Thought it was just holiday packaging.

Wow.

A non-negative post, about a current topic.

Feels good.

as far as I know, エ、え has been pronounced as a vowel 'e' or a diphtong 'ye', changing several times through history. Many european maps from early Edo or before have Edo as Yedo, and Hokkaido as Yezo. It's supposed to have stabilized in 'e' around middle Edo era, as far as I know.

Ebisu, the god, was traditionally written with ゑびす, which is clearly 'webisu'. The 'w' glide eventually disappeared but it was never a 'y'.
Again, just a guess, it may be that when the 'w' glide disappeared, ゑ and え merged, but え at the time was realized as 'ye', and by chance the Portuguese appeared at the time and devised the Yebisu romanization.

Just a wild guess though, I've no proof.

as far as I know, エ、え has been pronounced as a vowel 'e' or a diphtong 'ye', changing several times through history. Many european maps from early Edo or before have Edo as Yedo, and Hokkaido as Yezo. It's supposed to have stabilized in 'e' around middle Edo era, as far as I know.

Ebisu, the god, was traditionally written with ゑびす, which is clearly 'webisu'. The 'w' glide eventually disappeared but it was never a 'y'.
Again, just a guess, it may be that when the 'w' glide disappeared, ゑ and え merged, but え at the time was realized as 'ye', and by chance the Portuguese appeared at the time and devised the Yebisu romanization.

Just a wild guess though, I've no proof.

as far as I know, エ、え has been pronounced as a vowel 'e' or a diphtong 'ye', changing several times through history. Many european maps from early Edo or before have Edo as Yedo, and Hokkaido as Yezo. It's supposed to have stabilized in 'e' around middle Edo era, as far as I know.

Ebisu, the god, was traditionally written with ゑびす, which is clearly 'webisu'. The 'w' glide eventually disappeared but it was never a 'y'.
Again, just a guess, it may be that when the 'w' glide disappeared, ゑ and え merged, but え at the time was realized as 'ye', and by chance the Portuguese appeared at the time and devised the Yebisu romanization.

Just a wild guess though, I've no proof.

hell, sorry for that, the browser bugged I guess. Just delete it. and this one too.

- 3 points for Yago.. no ebisu for you.
i'm of coarse a fan of the ebisu black.
happoshu is horrible, yet, i want more..
thats all i have to contribute to this conversation.

wasn't it rather pretty much standardized from edo till whenever? early showa? that every え was actually written as ゑ , い　as ゐ or ひ whether first sylable or middle of word, わ　as は (this one was kept in the memory of the old system), しょう as　しゃう etc　while the pronunciation hasn't actually changed.

Alin, if you look at books from before the orthography reforms you'll see that there is actually a mix of え and ゑ, い & ゐ & ひ. Back in the day (I'm not sure exactly how far back) these just had different prononciations and you needed to distinguish the spelling. At some point a few syllables vanished, and it took another couple of hundred years to actually update spelling to match pronounciation.

Another surviving 'ye' is the Hard Rock Cafe: Uyeno

As far as I can tell, this is Ebisu's logic:

ゑびす　= old spelling
yebisu = old romanized spelling
ゑびす = yebisu

But now thanks to Yebisu, all these young foreigners think ゑ/ヱ ＝ ye. Yebisu good beer, bad educational resource.

As far as I remember from my historical linguistics class, Japanese used to lack the internal a-gyo (a,i,u,e,o), so all internal a-gyou were all ha-gyou (ha, hi, fu, fe, fo) and once those lost their sound within words (how the pa-gyou falls far!), then ひ within a word meant い. Post-war revisions normalized all this. (Bastard Occupation!) Initial え would have been fine all along though, right?

There's also the theory that old-Japanese (or was it proto Japanese) had no "e" sound at all, seeing that so few indigenous words in the language start with the え/エ sound.

So えび　would've been pronounced へび?
Can-Cam's top model Hebi-chan...

yup, japanese /e/ is supposed to have come from a proto-japanese /ai/. -i could have been a subject marker (kinda like korean's), which would explain pairs such as 声こゑ　声音こわね　雨あめ　雨風あまかぜ, 上うへ　上回るうはまはる. That's thousands of years before the ebisu topic, though.

marxy's , the internal /h/, earlier /p/ was lost, but there was an intermediate step in which it weakened into a /w/ Which doesn't meen internal /w/ didn't exist before, which it did independently. It just merged, so people got confused.
Before standardizing the spelling (late Edo, I think), most writers just used ha-gyou or wa-gyou randomly, depending on their dialect or their actual knowledge of Heian spelling rules.

Initial vowels were normal, so now ebi-hebi confusion.

yup, japanese /e/ is supposed to have come from a proto-japanese /ai/. -i could have been a subject marker (kinda like korean's), which would explain pairs such as 声こゑ　声音こわね　雨あめ　雨風あまかぜ, 上うへ　上回るうはまはる. That's thousands of years before the ebisu topic, though.

marxy's , the internal /h/, earlier /p/ was lost, but there was an intermediate step in which it weakened into a /w/ Which doesn't meen internal /w/ didn't exist before, which it did independently. It just merged, so people got confused.
Before standardizing the spelling (late Edo, I think), most writers just used ha-gyou or wa-gyou randomly, depending on their dialect or their actual knowledge of Heian spelling rules.

Initial vowels were normal, so no ebi-hebi confusion.

i mean... 申し訳ない

ok, can we deal with Evisu, the maniac, now ?

I got one today, actually. Didn't think it tasted much different from the regular Yebisu (which actually is a good thing). I drank it from the can, which means I never actually saw the color until your pic...thanks.

Someone told me that they went to a presentation from Asahi and apparently they are making some kind of super-exclusive beer that is not advertised anywhere and only served at high end restaurants and hotels. Supposedly it's around a thousand (y)en a can - anyone had one of these?

If we've had that beer, Asahi has failed.

As an aside - I once collected a whole bunch of beer stickers fr"om Sapporo when I lived out in Matsue (not a whole lot to do there). A month after I submitted the stickers to the contest I was awarded with two beers I had never seen or heard of before or since - one was a nice wheat ale, and the other was a "German inspired" 高級 lager. Both were brilliant, and I'm stunned that if the brewers have the ability to produce these things, why they don't flood the market with them.
At least that would give an option outside of the monthly introduction of beer made from beans

Marxy, you've really got in it for happoshu!

Up until the late 90s or so it did taste like cat urine, but it's improved in leaps and bounds since then. Suntory and Asahi make some good products -- the recent 極旨 is nice. Still, I'd stay away from any "black" happoshu or low-cal releases...and of course don't drink it at any temperature over 10 degrees.

"I once collected a whole bunch of beer stickers"

I did this too for that damn asahi beer-bot.
Since I'm still pouring beer without mechanical assistance, however, it's safe to say I'm not as lucky as you.

The hole Robocco left in my heart has yet to heal. It may never.

I've been enjoying it since I saw it sold. Gorgeous, smooth taste. Bought another sixer today.

Am I wrong or has the 限定 on 琥珀ヱビス run out? Couldn't find it at my local conbini last night...