Pom Juice
A Delicious Tangerine Drink from Ehime

Date：06, Nov, 2012
Investigated and Written by Misaka Youhei
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Last time, we took up a kind of business use orange juice manufactured in Japan. Talking of citrus fruits in Japan, however, it would be the tangerine called Mikan in Japanese. Although the orange is in demand as it is, Japanese want tangerines after all. Preparing for winter, taking his kotatsu out from a closet, and what Japanese need to have is tangerines, not oranges.

Oranges and tangerines, the two originate in a citrus fruit in India, they say. Some of the citrus in India all the way went along in China and came to Japan, it became tangerines. Other went to European nations like Spain and visited America over the sea, it became oranges. So the history makes us say tangerines are more suitable for Japanese than other citrus fruits as oranges, considering Japanese climate or culture.

Then, Japanese have to drink mikan juice rather than orange juice, don't we? An antithesis like that makes us introduce… it is not the true reason. This time we are taking up Pom Juice they made from tangerines in Ehime; a place that produces tangerines.

In 1952, they produced a model of Pom Juice. And in 1969, they changed it into pure fruit juice as the present Pom Juice. By the way, a wired word Pom was from Nippon-ichi, it means the best in Japan. Hisamatsu Sadatake a prefectural governor of those days named so wishing to have the best taste in Japan, they say. Greatly, they have kept the will in the name.

Japanese have a popular urban legend that says you can get Pom Juice when you turn an orange tap on in Ehime. Of course it is just a fictional gag. But they used the rumor and set an orange faucet which gives you Pom Juice for nothing, on the second story of Matsuyama Airport in Ehime. However, it is put only on third Sunday of every month.

It tastes good. You feel a nice harmony of sweetness and sourness. They've recently made Pom Juice closer to orange juice than the old tangerine drink and it's easy for everyone to have. Old Pom Juice was sourer but I miss it somehow.