Venture over to

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and check out the selection of Japanese beverages, there's 46 beverages listed. About 8 of them are carbonated beverages, the rest are coffee, water, sports, tea, juice, health, etc.

In terms of marketing, Seth Stevenson is right about the narrow market focus the Japanese have.

For example their Sokenbicha is marketed at health and beauty conscious young women who don't want to drink a "kid's" sickly sweet beverage, like Coke. The shape of the plastic bottle looks like a woman's ideal hourglass figure shape and is textured like a crystal perfume bottle.

Check out the website: http://www.sokenbicha.jp/

I actually drank it regularly before the bottle was redesigned as it was. One consequence of the advertising is, as a man, I would feel a little strange carrying this drink around.

Vitamin Water sucks (IMHO) because it's still overly sweet and candy-like array of weird flavors and colors. Sweet to me is not terribly refreshing. The colors and flavors don't seem natural, and come across as engineered like Flintstones vitamins. Can't we have sports drinks that don't look like dyed chemicals?