Konbini Kinyoubi: C.C. Lemon
Welcome to Konbini Kinyoubi, where every Friday (Kinyoubi) we visit our local convenience store (Konbini) and buy something delicious. This post contains affiliate links. For more information, please read our affiliate disclosure.
It’s time you learned a little bit about me. I first arrived in Japan on September 5, 2007. After college, I moved here to become an English teacher, and lived in a city called Kashihara that even the people who live there have never heard of. My first Saturday in the country, I took the train into Osaka and went out in Shinsaibashi with some new friends. Long story short: I discovered the magic of free drinks at karaoke, got blackout drunk, lost my wallet, and ended up sleeping on the street because I didn’t have the money to get home. I met a kindly robotics engineer who gave me 1000 yen so I could pay for the train back to my new flat. That’s how my Japanese journey started.
There’s more to the story, but starting that morning after I bought my train tickets, you need to know two things: I had some change leftover, and I was super hungover. Maybe not all-time top 10 hungover, but that’s just because I’ve lived an unsavory life. For most people, this would be an all-timer. My stomach was waging full-scale revolt. I stumbled to the train, got on, and winced for a half hour. Then, at a certain point, I became convinced I was on the wrong train. This can happen in Japan, and happened to me a lot in the early days. I got off the train at a random country station, only to discover that 1) I’d been on the right train, 2) the next “right train” wasn’t coming for quite a while, and 3) I was in the middle of nowhere. The station was just a platform next to a bunch of fields.
In a lot of pain and feeling like an idiot, I went to a vending machine to see if I could purchase some water with the change I had left. I could not afford a bottle of water, but I could afford a small lemon-flavored drink. I bought it and gave it a try.
Now that I’m really thinking, the one I had that day might not have been this brand. You’re never gonna believe this, but my memory of those days is a little faulty for some reason.
Hangover GONE. Immediately. Whatever this magic drink was, it cured my tummy ache as soon as I tasted it. Somehow the Japanese had invented a hangover cure, and it was in this little bottle.
Sober Gregg finds this story to be much more embarrassing than Drinking Gregg used to. How times have changed.
This is Vitamin Lemon, one of several brands of nearly-identical lemon drinks available in Japan. These are part soda, part wizardry, and always good. This small one can be found in the section of the konbini where all the weird medicine-drinks are sold. There’s also a larger, much more popular version that’s more of a soda and can be found in a lot of vending machines. This is C.C. Lemon.
Picture 23-year-old me with both arms full of empty lemon soda bottles on the way to the recycling bin after a rough weekend.
Try to ignore the fact that Vitamin Lemon and C.C. Lemon are two different brands. My wife and I only discovered just now that they aren’t the same, and I’ve drank so many of these I’m probably keeping the company afloat. It was my go-to hangover cure back in the day, always reliable, never failing. Smart readers will remember that I also said Pocari Sweat cured hangovers, and it does as well. The Japanese have two solid hangover cures better than Gatorade because this place is the future. I recommend double-fisting them.
C.C. Lemon tastes like a sweet soda, but not too sweet, a little tart but not too tart, and each bottle contains 40 lemons’ worth of vitamin C. That’s probably what cures the hangovers. Sadly, it’s a change from the old days, when bottles used to contain 70 lemons’ worth of vitamin C. I don’t know if that’s because they’ve diluted the vitamins or because lemons have gotten bigger, but at any rate, it tastes the same to me.
The real ones have had this from a can.
You could probably enjoy C.C. Lemon on its own as a soda, though I mostly use it to sooth my sore throat when I’ve got a cold. I’m not normally a soda person, and I don’t get hungover anymore, so I now treat it like medicine. Sometimes when I’m having my cheat day at the konbini, I’ll grab a Vitamin Lemon along with my haul to feel like I’m at least getting something that pretends to be nutritious.
It used to be that you could get C.C. Lemon from every vending machine and konbini in Japan. Sadly, it seems to have fallen out of popularity in the last 10 years or so, and now the little bottles are all that are left at 7-11 and Family Mart (at least near us). I remember the days when I could buy not just the regular bottle, but a BIG bottle that was maybe 1.5 liters. Those were the days.
Life in a bottle.
I will always hold a soft spot in my heart for C.C. Lemon, as well as the other brands that I consistently mistake for it. There are other sodas that have fruity flavor (Fanta, MATCH), but they don’t come close. C.C. Lemon is great not just because it’s delicious, or that it soothes a sore throat, or that it cures hangovers, but because I can pretend it’s good for me. That’s the mark of a great konbini snack. 15/10 always and forever. Please pick one up the next time you see it, and if they don’t have it, buy a little bottle of something that looks like it, because life is too short to realize you’re talking about two different products before you start your blog post.
