I stopped by a Starbucks in Tokyo the other day, and was intrigued by a small packet of what looked like M&Ms (or Smarties or Gems, depending on where you’re reading this). It wasn’t the product, it was the decoration: Poetry in gold script on the cellophane packet.

With some difficulty I read the words in the top left corner:

“On a faraway hillside,/ Manolo rakes his coffee beans in the sun./ He is preparing them for a pilgrimage/A journey where refined by”

On the bottom right corner, the same poem or a new one continued:

“In the morning,/ greeted by coffee/ in a land/ never seen,/ I have its beauty./Manolo.”

I’m not sure whether this is a Japanese package design; in Japan, English words or phrases are often used in a random evocative ungrammatical way as decoration. Or is it actually a US design targeted at Japan? Or is it something I’ll find in my local Starbucks, if only I look?