Japanese Pepsi goes green

THE Japanese are staying cool as a cucumber this summer with Pepsi Ice Cucumber — a soft drink based on the green gourd.

The beverage, which hits stores this week, doesn’t actually have any cucumber in it but has been artificially flavoured to resemble “the refreshing taste of a fresh cucumber”, said Aya Takemoto, spokeswoman of Japan’s Pepsi distributor Suntory Ltd.

“We wanted a flavour that makes people think of keeping cool in the heat,” Ms Takemoto said. “We thought the cucumber was just perfect.”