Canned Coffee Time!

Canned coffee is big in Japan. You can get hot coffee in vending machines at any time of day. You can even get cold cafe lattes and things. They’re everywhere.

This coffee by Fire is boasting some big time benefits in this advertisement…

Let’s read to find out what’s going on.

Ad Text in Japanese:

「挽きたて工房」

「24時間 以内抽出」

Red Text in upper right:

「この冬、挽きたてのホッカホカ」

Language time…

「挽きたて工房」

「挽きたて」

Don’t feel bad if you don’t know the first Kanji here, even I had to look it up.

It is read 「ひきたて」and the verb is 「ひく」. I rarely hear this verb, except for in the context of making coffee, or grinding up flour. You can see from the ALC definition of 「ひく」 that these are about the only times this verb comes up.

The「〜(し)たて」at the end of the verb has the meaning of “freshly made”, with a nuance of it having “just been done”. So if 「ひく」 means to grind coffee beans, 「ひきたて」means “freshly ground” coffee beans. The same 「〜(し)たて」can also be used with 「焼きたて」for “freshly baked/cooked”.

For example… 「挽きたてパンはおいしい」meaning, “freshly baked bread is delicious” or 「掃除したて」meaning, “just cleaned”.

「工房」simply means a type of “workshop” or “factory” but usually used in cases of crafts, or handmade things. For example, 「竹細工工房」for a “bamboo craft workshop”, a 「パン工房」for a handmade bread shop, a 「折り紙工房」for a place that does Origami craft work. This is kind of strange, but there is even a PDA focused Japanese homepage that calls itself PDA工房.

So, 「焼きたて工房」is a place that makes freshly ground coffee.

「24時間以内抽出」

Let’s start with 「24時間以内」24時間 simply means “24 hours” and 「以内」means “within” in terms of things like time, temperature, or other units of measure. So this means, “within 24 hours”.

「抽出」is a verb which means “to extract” or sometimes “to distill”.

So, the amazing thing about FIRE coffee, is that they claim to get their coffee into the can and sealed within 24 hours of brewing it, to ensure you get that fresh, 「挽きたて」taste!

Lastly…

「この冬、挽きたてのホッカホカ」

「この冬」simply means “this winter”.

「ホッカホカ」is a phrase which means “warm”. There are many other words like this! Anyone know any they would like to share?

So… To put it all together…

「挽きたて工房」Freshly Ground Factory

「24時間 以内抽出」Extracted within 24 hours!

「この冬、挽きたてのホッカホカ」This winter, (have the) warmth of freshly ground.

That’s all!

- Harvey