Baskin-Robbins in Japan

The following account came from T. R. Reid's book Confucius Lives Next Door - What Living in the East Teaches Us About Living in the West.

In Japanese, Baskin-Robbins is apparently pronounced "Basu-keen Low-Beans."

Since "Low-Beans" did not sound very ice-cream like, even in Japanese, the chain rather cleverly advertised itself in Japan not by its corporate name, but by its most salient feature, the famous thirty-one flavors.

Hence all over Japan, Baskin-Robbins ice-cream stores are known not as "Basu-keen Low-Beans", but more simply as "thirty one." By the way, Mr. ECP Flintstone, look at the photograph, wasn't that the very same ice-cream flavor we had at Baskin-Robbins in Woodley Park?! Too bad I didn't have space for 15 scoops of that.