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I was just browsing a new Japanese rations site today when I came across these pictures on their Russian Rations page:

From http://becky3379.web.fc2.com/russia.html :

Vodka


Brandy


Babelfish did its usual entertaining translation of the Japanese text:

Babelfish scrambled the words around and wrote:The Russian space food "vodka"
Became also pronoun of the your Russian liquor, "the vodka", properly even in the space food
The place where it is prepared, as expected is Russia, (laughing)
To ferment the vodka, to the wheat and the corn including the malt, after the distilling with the charcoal of the canoe birch,
It deodorized & filtered, mono is, but about is called the "fire liquor" alcoholic frequency to be high,
As for this space for food relatively it is low however, even then as for frequency there is also 40%.

So I don't know if it's really intended for space or whether it's a gag gift or a new type of Russian IV (intravenus) solution...but I'd still love some!

yeah, those are 'cosmonaut' rations. they come up on ebay every so often.

Well that certainly explains things aboard the MIR Space Station.

yes, you're right: I've heard a few years ago some fart contests aboard MIR that weren't obviously caused by the abuse of mineral water

I wouldn't mind scoring a couple of the brandy ones. You never know when you'll get stuck in the snow without a St. Bernard around.

yeah, those are 'cosmonaut' rations. they come up on japan yahoo
Auction every so often
http://openuser.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/user/pirates3jp

katojapan,

That seller you linked to, pirates3jp, had all sorts of rations. There were some British rations and more of the Russian vodka. Too bad I can't read Japanese. Some of the other items looked interesting but I could not identify them. It looked like one of the rations was from one of the former Soviet republics.

Lifesaver, if you copy that link and drop in onto this web page:

http://babelfish.yahoo.com

and tell it translate from Japanese to English, it'll do a decent job of translating the page for you. I just did that and was able to make sense of most of the auctions.

For example, here's what the Vodka auction page looks like translated:

http://72.30.186.56/babelfish/translate ... fm39250720

Thanks for the auction links, Kato! I wouldn't have normally found those myself. I don't have a problem browsing the German or French eBay auctions but the Japanese auctions present a more difficult problem because I don't even know what to type in to search for rations. Even worse...I don't know how I'd type in Japanese to begin with! So links like the ones you posted are a great help!

What does 2,000 yen translate to in U.S. dollars? Still, I'm sure postage would be a real deal killer on these. That is if they could even be shipped to the United States.

ETA: I just found an online currency converter. At today's exchange rate, 2,000 Yen is $17.53. That would make for some really expensive sipping, especially when you factor in postage.