Tokyo Through a Beer Glass
For me, drinking played a major part of life in Japan in the nineties. Without the social stigma Americans attach to it, the average person living in Japan has the freedom and almost the obligation to drink. A lot. Now I hadn't done much drinking or adventuring during college--University for me had been like an extension of high school, with harder tests and a part time job on the side and much more difficult parking. Japan became my Animal House: Break out the beer and let's party!The availability of public transportation made commuting after drinking relatively safe unless you fell down some stairs or off a platform and in front of a train. Beer was sold from vending machines in handy 12-ounce cans, handier 16-ounce cans or mini-kegs. Cheap whisky was also available. Getting drunk with the boss and coworkers was a common and often required after-work function. Drinking was part of the holidays: Spring blossom viewing? Spread a tarp under the cherry trees and get drunk. Summer? Hit a rooftop beer garden or grab a few beers at the local street festivals or fireworks shows. New Year? You first have bonenkai ("forget the previous year parties") followed by shinnenkai ("new year parties"). I remember one year when my Japanese boss was green in the face for two straight weeks around New Year's. It's a wonder we all weren't lugging our oversized livers around on wheelbarrows. It was necessary to watch out for "street pizzas" (also graphically referred to as okonomiyaki*) left by salarymen who'd had too much to drink Friday nights. Ignoring the proximity of pasty faces on the train could result in a messy encounter.
Ironically, for the volume of drinking going on, your choices were limited mostly to beer, whisky, sake and shochu, a clear liquor drunk either straight or mixed with another beverage as a chu-hai. Cocktails were a little harder to come by, relegated to the western-style restaurants in parts of downtown. When the first El Torito restaurant was built in Tokyo's Nishi-Kasai area, foreigners flocked there to order margaritas and pina coladas and get "a taste of home." I found that when engaged in a friendly little drinking contest with Japanese friends, it was wise to stick to beer or whisky. The Japanese make wonderful lager beer, rich and potent. After two drinks, the average salaryman's ears would turn red and he'd start to wobble. It was even wiser to avoid sake, which some Japanese can quaff from full-sized drinking glasses, and which I considered to be just short of lethal.
Salaryman Boxing at Takadanobaba
In addition to my tale about partying with the yakuza, I have two favorite drinking stories. The first one took place my first year in Japan, after a drinking contest with some of my students. Students and coworkers have a theory that gaijin can handle massive amounts of alcohol with no ill effects, and many of mine wanted to test this theory (as well as find out what kind of disgusting sea life I was willing to eat). As long as they were buying the beer, I was perfectly happy to go along with it.It's important to note that Tokyo tends to shut down early in the evening. Banks close at four, shops at seven, and the trains stopped running at midnight, leaving stragglers to find a hotel, take a taxi or find somewhere to sleep it off until service resumed at six. Normally, I was very careful to leave with plenty of time to get home. I also prided myself in being able to sleep on the train and wake up precisely at my stop. Well, that worked at least unless I'd had a lot to drink. So it happened after one night of answering student challenges that I fell asleep on the train and awoke in a completely unfamiliar place. After a brief moment of panic, I had enough wits about me to find I still had barely enough time to make the last train home if I made a transfer via a station called Takadanobaba. I stood on the platform, slowly sobering up, and I noticed a man lying passed-out on the near-deserted platform across the tracks. He slept in the most peculiar position: face resting against the cool, filthy concrete; knees drawn beneath his belly and his behind hoisted high in the air--a virtual "Kick Me" sign.
As I watched, another drunk lurched onto the platform. He viewed the first drunk, and obviously couldn't resist. He hauled back and kicked the first drunk right in the rear. "Oi!" he barked. "Get up!" The sleeping drunk continued sleeping, so the second kicked him again, much harder. "I said, get up!"
The first drunk's rear end toppled under the impact, then the rest of the man came up swinging. The kicker was only too happy to enter the fray, so I was treated to ten whole seconds of fisticuffs before passersby dragged the two away from each other. After a few mutual hostile words between the two, the arrival of my train blocked any further action.
The Long, Long Way Home
One July 4th coincided with a Japanese summer holiday, and some acquaintances--a group of helicopter pilots who were English students of a friend--invited us to a summer barbecue on one of the concrete-lined canals in the Chiba area. The location is important to the story because Chiba is located completely across Tokyo Bay from Kamakura, where I lived at the time. While the venue wasn't the perfect place for a barbecue, the good company, the food, and the availability of several cases of Budweiser made the party. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't have made the three precarious trips to the bathroom--climbing a ladder up an eight-foot concrete wall topped with barbed wire, walking four feet along that wall, hopping to the roof of their office and climbing down another ladder--had I been sober.Well into the evening, I realized I had better get going in order to make the final train home. I climbed into the local and transferred to the main Tokaido Line at Tokyo Station for the one-hour passage home to Ofuna Station in Kamakura. Once I reached the Tokaido Line, I kicked back and relaxed in the bench seat, knowing the most difficult part of the trip was over.
Right.
I awoke at a train stop, disoriented, thinking I had arrived at Totsuka, the last station before my stop. But it didn't look like Totsuka and I saw only one or two people left in the train car. Something was very wrong. I got off the train just before the doors started to close. The bell rang and the train started forward, then suddenly screeched to a stop. I turned just in time to see a man hurl himself through the train's open window and land on the platform. An alarm bell went off and the station staff ran toward him, shouting. Guess this guy had missed his stop as well.
I looked at the clock: Twelve thirty. The opposite platform was dark, indicating the reverse train had stopped for the night. Hell. The station sign said "Chigasaki," wherever that was. There should be a map near the gates and I could plan my night from there.
When I got to the gates, the man who had jumped out of the train was bowing low before a crowd of severe-looking station staff, repeating the mantra, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Considering the stiff penalties enacted for suicide attempts involving trains, this man was probably looking at a pretty nasty fine. I checked the map and found that Chigasaki was only two stops beyond Ofuna. That wasn't so bad. I'd get a taxi home.
Now I can just hear readers with any knowledge of Kanagawa Prefecture chuckling to themselves and muttering, "Moron." What I'd neglected to remember was that I was looking at two stops on an express train.
I found a taxi waiting beside the station and the driver showed no signs of fleeing before I got in. I leaned forward and told him where I wanted to go.
"Eh?" he said.
"Ofuna," I repeated.
"Eh?"
"OH-FU-NA." Didn't this guy understand Japanese? He then shrugged and cranked his meter. It wasn't until I saw the first highway sign showing Ofuna to be a significant number of kilometers away that I realized my mistake. I had ten thousand yen in my wallet, and he didn't take credit cards, and the price tag on that taxi meter was climbing fast. Totally sober now, I sat with my heart in my throat, praying the distance would close before my money ran out. If only I'd found a hotel!
I had him drop me off at Ofuna Station with 8,600 yen on the meter. I walked the rest of the way home, kicking myself for my stupidity. From that point on, I remembered to carry more money with me and to be a lot more careful about getting too comfortable in those bench seats after a few beers.
I've long since stopped drinking like that. America is not a safe place to drink, and the passage of time has introduced hangovers as my body's way of reminding me that it didn't appreciate the abuse. I'd like to think I'm a little wiser now as well. I don't regret the adventures, though.
* Warning: Gross-out. Okonomiyaki is a kind of pancake made from batter and whatever meat, vegetables or noodles are desired (okonomi: "as you like"). The nickname came from the salaryman's habit of inhaling a bowl of noodles after a long night of drinking, then horking his late dinner onto the sidewalk. At that time, I learned that salarymen don't tend to chew their noodles.
(c) 2004 Wendy Dinsmore