So today's issue was that there wasn't coffee at breakfast. This is fairly serious!
I was going to buy a vending machine coffee like the one I reviewed on the previous post, but then felt that actually, I might like to have something a bit different. I was idling away some time waiting for a boat to take me across Ashi Lake in Hakone, and in the shop they did have some bottles of coffee in a hot cupboard (I wish I'd taken a photo - they have a drinks fridge, but the top level is hot).
However, I'd passed a cafe in the same shop, and I'd seen that they were selling fresh coffee. Great! I was interested to see how fresh coffee really tasted in Japan - whether their cafe culture would like up to the one I'm used to. Moreover, the coffee was 300 Yen, which was more than twice the price of the canned coffee in the 'fridge'.
The coffee came in rather a small cup, which was a bit disappointing for the price (300 Yen is about £2.20). No clue to the quality of the coffee from the look of it, or the way that it was served - it was dispensed from an anonymous machine behind the serving counter.
The aroma didn't give much away in terms of clues either. It barely smelled of anything, except heat.
The first taste confirmed my suspicions: this was a rather high-margin product served at a tourist cafe. The coffee was watery, with not a great deal of flavour, and only a mild caffeine kick. It was really hot, actually, which to me is sometimes an indicator of poor quality coffee; it could be because it's kept at a high hot temperature in an urn somewhere.
I can't really say much more about it. It had a bit of bitterness, not much in the way of actual flavour, and I was trying to get it down quickly so I wouldn't have to carry the cup - so I ended up slightly burning my mouth.
So from now on I'm sticking to vending machine coffee.
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