Dakara is one of my favorite pet bottle drinks in Japan. I like it more than Poccari Sweat… Maybe about as much as I like Amino Supil.

Anyway, Japanese time.

Ad Text in Japanese:

「中からスッキリ！」

「食塩不使用になりました。」

「中からスッキリ！」

We have seen 「スッキリ」before, in fact just in the recent Pepsi Nex advertisement. It means the same thing, “refresh”. The first part, 「中から」means “from the inside”. 「中」means “inside”, and 「から」means “from”, in terms of direction. It might be better to translate this as “refreshing from within”.

「食塩不使用になりました。」

This one looks scary, but in fact it is just a vocabulary problem. Let’s break it down.

「食塩」means “cooking salt”. If you knew each individual Kanji, you could probably guess this, as 「食」means “eat”, and 「塩」is “salt”.

「不使用」means “does not use”. 「使用」is a fancy way to say 「使う」which means use. You can often see 「使用する」used as a verb. To get a little more geeky, the Kanji 「用」is from the verb, 「用いる」which also means “use”. The character in front, 「不」means “not” usually when used in compounds such as this one.

For example… 「不利」、「不便」、「不足」、「不満」。

The last verb,「になりました」is just the past tense of 「になる」which is “to become.”

So, Dakara now does not include any salt additives!

Yum.

- Harvey