At least we can say that no one came up dry in this challenge.

Earlier this year, Panasonic released a national survey regarding what residents of different prefectures in Japan think about their local tap water. In response to the statement “I think that the tap water in the area where I live is delicious,” the highest proportion of people who agreed were from Tottori, Japan’s least populous prefecture famous for its natural sand dunes. Tottori is also where our Japanese-language reporter Ikuna Kamezawa lived until she was 19 years old, when she moved to Tokyo. Thinking back, she realized that she never drank bottled mineral water until moving to the capital.

Super curious as to whether others might agree with the survey results, she asked her mother, who recently paid Ikuna a visit in Tokyo for some unusual mother-daughter bonding, to send her some Tottori tap water for a little tasting experiment at work. It arrived in a refrigerated package shortly thereafter.

According to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s homepage, tap water can be safely stored for drinking for about ten days when refrigerated, but Ikuna thought it would be gone long before that. It was almost as if she could sense a holy aura emanating from the water in the packets. Would it live up to its delicious reputation? She was ready to find out.

The premise of her experiment was simple. It would be a blind taste test with some of her fellow SoraNews24 writers to determine which of the three waters had the most appealing taste.

The selections were as follows:

A: Regular domestically produced mineral water
B: Tap water from Tottori
C: Tap water from Tokyo

From a visual standpoint, there was nothing to distinguish each type of water from the others once she had poured them into cups.

Ahiruneko, who was raised in Hokkaido, was the first challenger. Ikuna felt like tap water from Hokkaido should be relatively clean, with its proximity to unspoiled wilderness, but it seems Ahiruneko’s family doesn’t really drink tap water. Therefore, would he be able to tell?

Ahiruneko: “I can tell that they’re all different. Both A and B taste good to me, but I can’t really pick a winner. C, however, is bad. It tastes like tap water and isn’t my favorite.”

Saitama-raised Masanuki Sunakoma was up next.

Masanuki: “B is the most delicious. C has a smooth feel to it…come to think of it, doesn’t A as well? Can I try them all again? Huh, now they all taste smooth to me… ”

Third up was a relative newcomer to the team, Takamichi Furusawa. He grew up  in Gunma, a bit to the northwest of Tokyo.

Takamichi: “C is definitely inferior to the others. It doesn’t feel good going down. It’s difficult to say whether A or B is the best, but since I’m sensing a bit of fishiness from A, I’ll cast my vote for B.”

Osaka Prefecture-raised Seiji Nakazawa was fourth. How would he react to the choices?

Seiji: “I like A the best. B is a little too mild, while C is a little too strong. I’m not sure which one is most ‘delicious,’ but you can definitely taste the differences among all of them. I guess A is just my preference.”

P.K. Sanjun, from Chiba, was fifth and last.

P.K.: “A and B resemble each other but C is different. The ones that are like what we drink normally are A and B. If I have to chose, A is probably easiest to drink. I can’t really describe C but it has distinction…is it spring water?”

With that, here were the overall results of the taste-testing:

A: Regular domestically produced mineral water…2 votes
B: Tap water from Tottori…3 votes
C: Tap water from Tokyo…0 votes

Ikuna was thrilled that Tottori’s tap water came in as the top pick overall, along with being somewhat relieved that not a single reporter chose Tokyo’s tap water as his favorite.

▼ Ikuna even snuck a taste of the waters herself…and experienced the taste of her childhood.

Ikuna concluded that residents of Tottori are justified in their claim to having the most delicious tap water in all of Japan. She encourages anyone who’s visiting the prefecture, whether to the dunes or the nearby Pokémon Sandshrew Park, to sample some of the tap water when their throats get a little too dry from all of the sand.

Reference: PR Times, Metropolitan Police Department
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