Why Japan Buys Bottles of Plain Hot Water

Japan gave plain hot water a name, a bottle, and a red button of its own.

▼ About This Episode

On the first cold morning of the year, the hot row comes back to a campus vending machine. Sakura presses a red button expecting tea and pulls out a bottle that is completely clear. The label reads "sayu" — plain hot water, nothing added.

Haru follows that bottle into a quiet corner of Japanese business. One brand says it has shipped about 73 million bottles of it since launch. A housewares company that wanted to make a mug for sayu went looking for a definition, and says all it found in the dictionary was "water that has been boiled" — no temperature, no method. So the company wrote its own: boil the tap water for ten minutes to drive off the chlorine, then let it cool to fifty-five degrees or a little above. The fifty-five, they say, came from something they had heard about how warm drink makers keep that red row.

Then an electronics maker built a portable kettle with a sayu setting: it boils, and then it keeps boiling for ten more minutes. Not for safety, because the tap water here is already drinkable, but for the smell of the chlorine and the feel of the water in your mouth. Where you live, is the tap water drinkable — and would anyone pay for it warm?

▼ Featured Links

Asahi Oishii Mizu Tennensui Sayu — the bottled hot water in this episode: https://www.asahiinryo.co.jp/products/water/oishiimizu_sayu/　

▼ Timestamps (Chapters)

00:00 - A Vending Machine Turns Red

01:02 - 73 Million Bottles of Nothing

01:44 - The Company That Wrote the Definition

03:20 - A Kettle With a Sayu Button

04:10 - Warm Nothing, and What Came From It

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◆Note

The content of this program is intended solely for informational purposes and reflects the personal views of the creators. Please make any investment or business decisions based on your own judgment and responsibility. This program does not endorse or recommend any specific financial products or investment strategies.

🎵Music by Ivan Ohanezov from Pixabay

#JapanBusiness #JapaneseCulture #NarrativeJapan #JapanPodcast #Sayu #JapaneseDrinks