In 1853, when Commodore Perry arrived in Uraga Harbor and began negotiations with officials of the Edo Shogunate, he served lemonade on board his ship. When the bottle was opened, the cork made a loud pop and bubbles came rushing out. The officials, trained to react to any sudden threat, reached instinctively for the hilts of their swords.

It was the first carbonated drink many of them had ever encountered. The sound of a pressurized bottle opening was, to ears that had never heard it before, alarming.

That drink — lemonade brought by foreign ships — became the ancestor of ラムネ, ramune, one of the most recognizable tastes of Japanese summer.

How the name and the bottle work

ラムネ is a phonetic rendering of "lemonade" — the sounds shifted as the word passed through Japanese. The drink evolved over time from actual lemon flavoring to a lighter, more neutral sweetness that is difficult to describe precisely. Faintly citrusy, faintly sweet, unmistakably its own thing. Some say it tastes like bubble gum. That is not wrong.

What makes ramune instantly recognizable is the bottle. A glass bottle sealed not with a cap but with a marble — a glass ball held in place against a rubber gasket by the pressure of the carbonation inside. To open it, you use a small plastic plunger included with the bottle, pressing the marble down into a chamber at the neck where it rattles around as you drink. The marble cannot be removed while the bottle is sealed. It is the carbonation itself that keeps it in place.

This bottle design, called a Codd-neck bottle after its British inventor, was used widely in the 19th century and has since largely disappeared everywhere except Japan, where ramune has kept it alive. Opening one for the first time requires a moment of understanding — you press firmly, there is a hiss, and the marble drops.

When and where you drink it

Ramune is a summer drink in the most specific sense. You find it at 夏祭り, natsumatsuri — summer festivals — alongside yakisoba and shaved ice, the bottle cold and wet from a cooler full of ice water. You drink it while enjoying 夕涼み, yūsuzumi — the evening cooling, the quiet pleasure of sitting outside as the day's heat finally begins to lift.

The cold glass in your hand, the marble rattling, the sound of cicadas somewhere nearby. These things arrive together in memory as a single composite sensation. This is what ramune is — not just a drink but a particular moment of summer, reliably reproduced.

Where it is now

Ramune has traveled beyond Japan in recent decades. It appears in Asian supermarkets internationally, is popular at Japanese cultural festivals abroad, and has developed a following among people who have never been to Japan but encountered it somewhere else first. The bottle does a lot of the work — it is unusual enough to attract attention, satisfying enough to reward it.

The taste is not complex. But some things do not need to be complex to be exactly right for the moment they belong to.