Iyoshi Cola: The Door I Never Knew Was There

I was napping in the hot sun when my throat staged a rebellion. Napping in direct sunlight is a dangerous hobby for a cat, the kind that ends in extreme thirst, and by the time I woke up I felt like I had been air-dropped into the middle of a desert. Naturally, I issued an order to my human, Kai: something cold, something fizzy, immediately.

He came back with two white cans I had never seen before. The first thing I noticed was the bird printed on the front. A kingfisher, which I happen to be extremely fond of. They are such lovely, eager little creatures, always diving for their dinner. But bird juice? Surely that is banned under some international treaty. Above the yellow bird, in big letters, it said Iyoshi Cola. So it was not bird juice… Disappointing.

The chilled can was sweating harder than Kai does when I stare at him for food, which meant we had to drink it fast before it went lukewarm and useless.

I grabbed the can with my majestic paws and was about to crack it open when Kai stopped me. He said he had received special instructions from the local cola dealer: before drinking, turn the can upside down. Why? No idea. But instructions are instructions, and I am a cat who respects mysterious beverage rituals. So I flipped it a few times, opened it, and poured it into a small glass. And then it all made sense.

The color was light brown, almost golden, and tiny particles floated inside, drifting in slow circles as if the drink had its own little weather system. I have tried cola before, mostly the big foreign ones: the red Christmassy one and its blue rival. They are familiar, fizzy, comforting. But this one? The colas I had known were the color of deep space: uniform, opaque, and mysterious in a way that gave away nothing about what was inside them. This one was practically see-through, and whatever was drifting in there had me curious.

A look at the can solved the mystery: kola nuts, seven spices, reishi, ginseng. Ah. So those drifting specks were not random at all. They were flavor treasures. The instructions said to flip the can because the spices like to nap at the bottom. Relatable. I, too, struggle to wake up after a nap.

I took a sip, and the flavors spread through my body, sending little chemical telegrams to my brain announcing that whatever I had just placed inside was absolutely the right kind of stuff. My whiskers curled. My shoulders loosened like I had just slid my furry body into an onsen near Mount Fuji. My eyes widened, and maybe, just maybe, a tiny tear escaped, rolling down my cheek like a brooding anime protagonist who had finally found meaning in life. Fine, that is overly dramatic. I am still the same lazy feline who spends his days resting between two naps.

First came a bright citrus sparkle, lemon and lime hopping onto my tongue. Then the spices marched in: clove, cardamom, and cinnamon dancing like a perfectly synchronized idol group, with coriander whispering citrus in the background. Underneath it all was the deep herbal richness of reishi and ginseng, a quiet nod to traditional Japanese medicine. Now, this is not medical advice, but reishi has been used for centuries in traditional medicine, so there is a small chance you will become immortal. Probably not. But a cat can dream.

It was cola, and also not cola. It was something older, wiser, more complex. Like cola that went abroad, studied philosophy, and came back enlightened.

A drink this dramatic deserves a story with some roots, and Iyoshi Cola has one. It was created by Takahide Kobayashi, better known as Cola Kobayashi, a self-proclaimed cola maniac who stumbled on a century-old cola recipe online and never recovered. He traveled the world tasting colas, then found his inspiration in the workshop his grandfather, the traditional medicine craftsman Ryotaro Ito, had left behind in Shimo-Ochiai, Tokyo. Refining the recipe with a craftsman’s precision, he began selling in 2018 from a food truck called Kawasemi-go, named after the kingfisher that became the brand’s logo. Today it is widely credited as Japan’s first craft cola maker, with shops in Shimo-Ochiai, Shibuya Jingumae, and Asakusa, plus bottles and cans in convenience stores and specialty shops.

If you want to try it yourself, check certain vending machines, or stores like Natural Lawson and Seijo Ishii, or visit the Shibuya shop where several flavors await. There is the flagship THE DREAMY FLAVOR, THE JAPAN EDITION blended with domestic citrus and spices, the wonderfully strange MILKOLA that mixes cola with milk, the ready-to-drink canned version I had, and seasonal limited editions that appear and vanish like migrating birds.

Cola is not something most people associate with Japan, but Kobayashi-san did what Japanese creators do best: take a concept and perfect it. Before Iyoshi Cola, I did not know what real cola tasted like. The colas I had known all my life taste familiar, comforting, and exactly like what you expect, which is precisely why Iyoshi Cola caught me off guard.

It did not replace anything. It simply opened a new door I did not know existed. And now? Now I am ruined. I cannot go back to the usual colas you find in stores. They are still good, still reliable, but Iyoshi Cola showed me a whole new dimension of flavor I did not know was possible.