Pocari Sweat

Soundtrack: Muse's Our Time is Running Out

The Virtual Tokyo Marathon was sponsored by by Otsuka Pharmaceutical, makers of Pocari Sweat. This reminded me of a friend of mine, Joe, and his immortal question: "Who is Pocari, why are we drinking his sweat?"
The answer: It is not sweat and there is, disappointingly, no Pocari.
The strange English name is an endemic here in Japan. You see people wearing poorly written or nonsensical English (often referred to as Engrish, a recent example I encountered was a woman wearing a shirt reading "I'm Constapation"). The analogy given to me by a friend is that English in Japan is like Latin in English. The layman is not always fully versed on the langauge or the meaning, but they like to plaster it all over the place.
Anyway, back to Pocari and his Sweat. The name was supposedly derived from the fact that it replenishes the nutrients you sweat out: such as electrolytes.
The name Pocari is derived from the Japanese for lightly or ぽっかり.
As for how it tastes: like sweetened water and no, I do not drink it that often because the name is still off-putting.