I guess track marks won't necessarily mean you're heroin addict anymore...

There was many a morning when I would down cups of coffee after a rough night like an athlete drinks Gatorade following a dehydrating run and joked that it would be so much easier if they could just hook me up to an IV and give me a slow drip of coffee throughout the day.  Leave it up to the Japanese to get close.

Tenteki10 in Tokyo, Japan may be the first in the latest fad of "health bars" where you can order up your own selection of IV cocktail to provide a nice pick me up for the day.  From Japan Today:

Ten options with different effects and five courses consisting of these options are available. The basic price is 2,000 yen, and customers can request an option or course menu, for an additional charge.

“Many people daily suffer from exhaustion, insomnia and backaches on a daily basis because they don’t take proper care of themselves,” says a doctor at Tenteki10. “They try supplements, home remedies or cheap energy injections. Some of these ailments cannot be healed that way and could possibly develop into more serious illnesses, including depression.”

I'm not sure getting supplements injected straight into the bloodstream is that much better than taking the old fashioned oral route and letting your body absorb it, but I guess in this fast-paced world, every second counts.  That, or people really like needles--OUCH!

Why wait in line when there's a perfectly good Baskin-Robbins across the street?

I've never actually had the opportunity to enjoy a cup of Pinkberry yogurt, but I seem to read about this thing everywhere. I'm not sure what the fuss is all about. Apparently, all it amounts to is some frozen yogurt with fruit or a handful of Cap'n Crunch sprinkled on top, but it seems to have become the "it" treat in Los Angeles/Hollywood. Pictures of celebrities with a Pinkberry cup in their hand are pretty commonplace now in the weekly paparazzi magazines, and the buzz around these things are so hot that people have been known to wait in line for unusually long amounts of time to get their fix.

The New York Times today has it's own story about Pinkberry. As is usually the case with anything so simple and yet so popular, it has spawned a number of copycats. The idea behind the yogurt started in South Korea, and the competition sounds like something out of some cross-town tae kwon do school rivalry.