If you are thirsty, what kind of non-alcoholic beverage will you buy in Europe? Probably there are only a few choices, mineral water, sweeten ice tea, soda, fruit juice, sports drink or energy drink. Soda can be cola and other carbonated sweeten beverage.
On the other hand, there are wide variation of beverage in Japan than in Europe. In addition to above, there are coffee, unsweet tea, soup and sweet uncarbonated beverage sold in Japan. Also tea can be divided into two categories, green tea and black tea. Then, especially the biggest difference is that hot beverage in bottles or cans are sold in Japan too.
According to Japan Soft Drink Statistics 2021, green tea related beverage has 24.3% share of total beverage produced in 2021. Followed by mineral water 17.8%, soda 17.4% and coffee 14.1%. However, if you consider regarding turnover, coffee has 21.5% share, then followed by 19.6% green tea and 18.8% soda. Mineral water which has 17.8% share in production has only 8.1% in turnover. It is quite similar to sports drink which had only 5.9% share in production but 7.6% in turnover.
The statistics show that mineral water is popular but it is sold cheaper than coffee or sports drinks. Probably mineral water and soda are weak due to there turnovers are concentrated on summer season. It is quite sure that much less people buy mineral water and sports drinks in winter than in summer. Also these two beverage are not sold in hot version, not like green tea, coffee and black tea which are usually sold as hot version in winter.