Ad Text in Japanese:

「こっち。」

「おいしところが、いい。」

「ペプシネックス 」

「あと味すっきり」

I heard that this new Pepsi Nex is actually pretty good, compared to the low calorie Coke that came out a while ago. I have yet to try this stuff though… Maybe the extra sugar would help me get posts done more often!

「こっち」basically means, “here”, but has a nuance of “over here”. You can say 「こっちこっち！」to someone to say “this way!” or, “come here!” It can also mean “this one”, for example if there is a red bike and blue bike in front of a kid at the store, he may say 「こっちがいいの」to mean that he wants the one here, that he’s pointing at. Just like 「これ、それ、あれ」you can also say 「そっち」for “that one” or “that way”, as well as 「あっち」for the even further distance variation.

「おいしいところが、いい。」

「おいしい」means “delicious”, we have seen that recently on the eel ad. 「ところ」means “place”, and you probably know that 「が」is just a particle and 「いい」means “good”. So all together it looks like, “the delicious place is good”. However, that doesn’t make any sense. There are a couple of tricks to this one.

First, 「ところ」in this case, doesn’t literally mean “place”, but is more naturally “the part”. 「がいい」can be more naturally translated as “I like”. So, if I had to translate this, I would say… “The thing I like about it, is that it’s delicious.”

Does anyone have any examples of this usage of 「ところ」? It’s pretty different than what textbooks usually teach.

「ペプシネックス 」This is Katakana for Pepsi Nex, ’nuff said.

「あと味すっきり」This is written in the small white circle on the lower left of the bottle in the advertisement. 「あと味」literally translates to “after taste”, and guess what, it means just that! Sometimes Japanese makes sense.

「すっきり」is a word I thought that describes a feeling. When you are constipated, and finally, after much toil able to empty your bowels, you feel 「すっきり」. You also feel 「すっきり」when you wash your face with cold water after a one hour ride on an incredibly packed commuter train in the summer… Basically, it means “Refreshing”.

So, to get to the point… 「あと味すっきり」means, “refreshing after taste”.

That’s all!

- Harvey