Today, I was going to write an English version of this Japanese post about what's coming in season and what's going out at the Green City Market. That was until I found an old bottle opener in the back of a kitchen drawer.

Made of a single piece of metal, the opener felt heavy in my hand. I'd never seen it during my three years of kitchen usage at Patrick's, but I was familiar with the opener itself--it was the same bottle opener that my grandfather used to keep in a cupboard in his tiny, tatami-matted living/dining room in Tokyo. I recognized it by the Japanese inscription on both sides of the handle; one said "Sapporo Beer" and the other "Ribbon Citron." It must have been a cheap giveaway that came with maybe a crate of Sapporo Beer.

The original tag was still intact. On one side, the plastic tag showed a design of a can of Sapporo Lager Beer, and on the other, a promotional character, Ribbon-chan, for the family of soft drinks called "Ribbon," also produced by the Sapporo Beer company. The bottle opener was nothing special when I saw it being used every day as a kid, but now the same thing looked awfully cute and quaint. This is a keeper, I thought, and put it on the dining table. (I was doing some packing for our August relocation.)

When I went back into the dining room after a while, I wondered how in the world a Japanese bottle opener ended up in a 30-something American guy who'd been to Japan only once. The most likely suspect is his famous grandma, who left him a truckload of weird artifacts (like a huge set of Thai cutlery with a tiny statue of Buddha carved on each and every one of them, and a garish orange table that can support an elephant). But still. Mistified, I did some quick sleuthing--with Google and Wikipedia being my personal Hastings, Ms. Lemon and Watson.

First, I looked up "Ribbon Citron," for I'd never heard of such a soft drink. I figured it was probably a soda-like thing that boomed in the 60s and ceased to exist since (the graphic had that 60s feel). My guess proved wrong. Ribbon Citron came into being way back in the Meiji era. Carbonated (and sometimes sweetened) water had been introduced in Japan in the 1890s as a health drink, just as many Europeans back then drank carbonated (naturally or not) water in spas to promote health. In 1909, Japanese beer company (Dainihon Bakushu) picked up the fad to make use of the excess CO2 generated during the production of beer, and placed it in the market as "Ribbon Citron."

To my surprise, Ribbon Citron is still being produced and sold in Japan. Perhaps it is somewhat an object of nostalgia, rather than something people drink for the pure joy of its taste, but I have to say a (almost) 100-year old soda is pretty impressive. Now that I knew how old the carbonated drink was, I grew curious how old the bottle opener might be. A few more clicks around Sapporo Beer's "Ribbon-chan.com," a very cute site explaining the history of the soda and its promotional character, revealed that the animated character of the girl with a big ribbon was introduced in 1957; this means that the bottle opener was made after 1957. Not as old as I'd hoped it might.

Another clue on the tag was the design of the beer can. With a large red "North Star" and a golden S-curve that devides the can into blue and white areas, the design was completely unfamiliar to me. And yet the retro-modern design somehow evoked a strange sense of nostalgia. It looked like I could have seen it on the yellowing pages of my mother's old cooking magazines.

Sapporo Beer's corporate site again proved helpful. Its history page had an information about the design of the can. According to the article, the canned beer was introduced in 1959. The can was designed by a pioneering American industrial designer Walter Landor, who also designed 7-Up cans, Kellog's corn flake box, Levi's logo, and the famous WWF panda, among other things. At the time, the can didn't have a pull-open tab, so one needed to punch two holes on the top with a can opener to pour out the beer (wow). The plastic tag on the bottle opener in question was this type--without a tab. Since the easy-open can started appearing in stores in 1965, the bottle opener was given away probably before that date.

So, the bottle oepner was most likely produced between 1959 and 1965. How it ended up in an American guy's kitchen more than 40 years later is a mystery. I wonder if the same family who gave Patrick's grandma that set of Buddha cutlery is responsible for the bottle opener as well. That would be a very strange connection, if that were the case, for I, too, have lived in the three countries involved (Thailand, Japan and the United States). My grandfather would be amused to know that the same bottle opener he used turned up in his granddaughter's foreign kitchen 6,000 miles across the ocean. Well, actually I'm not quite sure about this--he was very inscrutable--as a real man was supposed to be back in his time, but it's fun to imagine it this way, with my grandfather sharing my surprise and curiosity.