Gaijin Tonic

I remember sitting on my sofa in England on New Year’s day 2000, watching the television news. The “millenium bug” hadn’t wiped out all our computers as predicted, and no asteroids or aliens had come. Instead, the news programme was reporting how people all over the world had celebrated the biggest night of the century, the previous night. They showed footage of jubilant merrymakers dancing on the streets of Rio De Janeiro, people in Times Square wearing novelty “2000″ sunglasses and hugging under a sky lit up by fireworks.
Then they cut to Japan, where a group of very sober and serious looking folk were standing in line outside a temple, shivering and exhaling clouds of condensation. This didn’t strike me as a the most fun way to celebrate “the party of a lifetime.”

I’ve since come to learn that in Japan, New Year’s Eve is all about visiting temples and praying, or staying home and spending time with the family, (as oppose to drinking yourself to oblivion, like myself.) It’s a bit like Christmas day at home, I suppose.
Ask the average Japanese person how they plan to spend New Year’s Eve, and they’ll tell you that they’re going to watch an annual girls-versus-boys singing contest on the NHK channel.
Now, I’m not one to judge, but that sounds about as exciting as reading women’s magazines in a dentist’s waiting room.
It is, however, excellent news for me, because it means that I can go out in town without having to deal with all the usual New Year’s nightmares. On New Year’s Eve at home, the bars and clubs are bank-drainingly expensive to get into, and rammed full of wasted, sweaty people who only go out about twice a year and can’t handle their drink and, consequently, bumble around jeering and farting. It also takes about two hours of interminable waiting to get served at the bar. This makes December 31st, hands down, the worst night of the year to leave the house.

On the eve of the millenium, I spent the night freezing my nuts off in Trafalguar square, watching fireworks with about a million other people, trying to acrobatically dodge puddles of steaming puke and avoid being crushed to death. It was like being in some kind of hellish, post-apocalyptic refugee camp. I spent much of the night repeatedly failing to get into any pubs because they were all too busy or had uptight dress codes. I eventually walked dejectedly home because it was impossible to find a taxi.

There won’t be such woe this year in Japan, oh no.
This New Year’s Eve, I can happily stroll into my local pub and meet my friends just like any other night, without paying to get in or waiting to get served. Bliss.
(…Unless, of course, it’s f***ing closed!)

In late December, each Japanese company throws an end-of-year shindig called a “bonenkai,” where employees can bid farewell to the year by getting plastered on the company dime. Very much in the same spirit as the office Christmas parties at home, with less photocopying of arses.
My company had a bonenkai last week and, never one to turn down a free drink, I obligingly attended. Typically, the party was an all-you-can-eat-and-drink deal and, being entirely broke after Christmas shopping, I took full advantage of the arrangement, digging into endless silver platters of pasta, pizza, roast beef and seafood, and glugging down glasses of red wine, beer and sake.

While the consumption of copious quantities of booze is necessary for the Japanese to let off steam in such uncomfortable social situations, there are still certain codes of conduct that must be observed- you can’t turn up in a toga fashioned from a bed-sheet, pour a pint of beer over the boss’s head and propose a panty raid on the local nursing college.

Before the festivities begin, you must wait until everybody’s glass has been filled, and say “kampai” (”cheers”) before you start to guzzle your drink down. Failing to do so gets the same frosty reaction you might get after merrily tucking into supper at an Amish household before grace.

When the dinner plates had been cleared, the boss stood up, and the table fell silent. He asked everyone to make a short speech reflecting on the year just passed and expressing hopes for the coming year. Far from being a great lover of public speaking, I sat, nervously drinking, trying to make sense of my co-workers’ slurred Japanese speeches, awaiting my turn with mounting dread. When the boss eventually gestured for me to speak, I mumbled a few platitudes. This was greeted by a painfully long, awkward silence, followed a little polite clapping.

As the night grew longer, I glanced at my watch and realized I’d have to leave soon to catch the last train home, or be stranded in the city and forced to sleep in a karaoke box or an internet cafe, like some kind of high-tech tramp. Japanese etiquette dictates that you can’t just grab your coat and sneak out the back door. You have to wait for the end of the party to be formally announced by the boss, who does so by leading the partygoers in a loud clap and exclaiming “ippon jime!”
My coworkers were taken-aback by my amusement at this protocol. “So how do you end parties in England?” they asked.
“Parties at home always finish when the barman shouts, ‘all right everyone, piss off, it’s closing time.’”

Thanks to my high alcohol threshold and the sobering effect of public speaking, I managed to get through the party without making a drunken spectacle of myself, unlike most of my co-workers who were red-faced and cackling, singing, stumbling over, and pestering waitresses with lewd comments. Of course, all this would be forgotten the next morning. In Japan, if you drink excessively at a work function, your colleagues will give you an enthusiastic slap on the back, rather than recommend a trip to an alcoholics anonymous meeting.

In a couple of weeks we’ll be having a “New Year party,” I’m told.

Well, as 2007 draws to a close, it’s time for me to look back at the past twelve months through rose-tinted beer-goggles. As usual in Japan, the year has been an eventful blur, clouded by jet-lag, sensory overload and lashings of booze. (Luckily I’ve been keeping a record of my drunken antics on this blog.)
And so, I’ve decided to round off another great year in Japan by honouring my delightful Japanese hosts and hostesses with my own little acknowledgments for oft-overlooked achievements, chosen entirely by yours truly, just for the hell of it.

First off, The Award for MOST GROTESQUE DRINK IN JAPAN goes to…

“Bilk”

This revolting-sounding concoction is a mixture of beer and milk. Apparently it’s a fruity beer aimed at women, and was conceived as a way to use up surplus milk. It sounds like something that’s been milked out of a cow with alcohol-poisoning. I balk at the idea of drinking Bilk.
A close runner up is…

“Choco-Bear Beer.”

Choco-Bear Beer sounds like an idea Willy Wonka might have in a moment of drunken madness. It tastes like the liquid you might vomit up after an ill-advised post-pub Snickers bar.

Next, The Award for BIGGEST ODDBALL IN JAPAN goes to…

This endearing eccentric, who can often be spotted cycling around at festivals in the Yokohama area, wearing fake boobies and a giant hat which looks like Elton John’s wedding cake.

He’s clearly insane, but he’s a welcome antidote to the traditional Japanese obsession with conformity.

Moving on, The Award for MOST OUTRAGEOUSLY OFFENSIVE JAPANESE NIGHTCLUB FLYER goes to…

Not only is “MONKEEEEEE FUUUUUUCK!” the best name for an event in the history of the world, but “Fuck Masta Fuck” is surely the best DJ name ever, as well.
Another great flyer I found this year featured the DJ with the funniest name ever:

He shouldn’t be so hard on himself.

Sticking with the strange use of English, The Award for MOST RIDICULOUS BAR NAME goes to…

Bollocks Paradium, in Kyoto, for managing to incorporate a spelling mistake and a rude slang word in it’s short name. Excellent work!

There was also stiff competition from the similarly absurd bars, White Lover, Bar Sushi and Men, Labia, and countless other establishments which you can read about here.

The Award for BEST ALCOHOL-RELATED ACCESSORY goes to…

These “Yopparai Oyaji Straps” (Drunken Old Man Mobile-Phone Straps), made by Strap Ya.

Kids, be the talk of the playground with your very own puking, alcoholic businessman phone strap.

The runner up is this hilariously pointless Sake-Bottle USB key.

Sure to drive alcoholic businessmen to distraction while they work.

And last but not least, The Award for WEIRDEST NOVELTY BAR IN JAPAN goes to…

Kagaya, in Shinbashi, which, frankly, is could win the title hands down any year. The chief appeal of this utterly mental Shimbashi pub is the amazing host, Mark Kagaya, who surprises his customers by making them play weird games, and serves drinks in surreal international costumes. The menu is a puppet show. You can read more about it here.

So, those are some of the highlights of my year, remembered through the mist of a hundred hangovers.

In the West, the notion of going to Kentucky Fried Chicken for Christmas dinner is considered profoundly depressing. Sitting alone in a soulless junk-food restaurant on Christmas day, forlornly chewing on oily chicken wings, is the last resort of the most desperately lonely, friendless, bedsit-dweller.
In Japan, however, it’s a national craze! Folks form long lines at Christmas, shivering outside in the cold, waiting for hours to get their hands on a seasonal party bucket.
Roast turkey is as rare as rocking-horse shit in Japan, and untried by most Japanese people, so many assume fried chicken is the next best thing.

I can sort of see the thinking behind the association of Christmas and Kentucky Fried Chicken- their logo is the right colours- red and white, and their mascot is a jolly, portly man with a white beard. But still, KFC?

My dodgy little blog is somehow one of the nominations for “the best humorous blog about Japan,” on the esteemed website “What Japan Thinks.”
It’s nice to be noticed but I suspect that Michael J Fox would have more chance of winning a Jenga tournament than I have of winning this, judging by the popularity of the other great sites nominated.
So, if you’re feeling charitable, feel free to follow this link and vote for yours truly, to make my defeat marginally less humiliatingly large.

“What Japan Thinks” is a marvelous site full of interesting facts and statistics learned by polling Japanese folks on various topics, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to relate some of their findings which are about booze, since this is a site dedicated to getting pissed-up. So, according to their surveys…

36.1% of Japanese people drink Happoshu after a bath.

Budweiser is the most popular imported beer (tsk.)

59.6% of people drink chuhai at home.

Drinking water is the most popular hangover cure in Japan.

While drunk, women often sexually harass others, and men fall asleep.

Well I never! no wonder I go out drinking so often.

There are two reasons not to eat from the “wanko menu” at this cafe in Tama Plaza, Yokohama. A: It sounds like the chef’s been jacking off into the soup, and B: it’s dog food. “Wanko” means “puppy.” It seems that serving pricey gourmet grub to chihuahuas and dachsunds is the latest development in Japan’s obsession with cute, fluffy creatures. This is my second wanko food sighting in a week (check out the wanko ice cream, a few posts below.)
I wonder how “cute” these pooches will be when they look like bloated, sweaty, hairy grubs, waddling and wheezing down the street, laying turds the size of boa constrictors! If that happens, poor old Fido will quickly be replaced with whichever animal is featured in the latest hit TV commercial.
Remember, kids, a wanko is for life, not just for Christmas.

Japanese bars have posters of women in swim-wear drinking huge tankards of beer on the beach, thus combining three of my favourite things. These pictures, which advertise beers such as Asahi and Kirin, are very easy on the eye, so I thought I’d post a few on my blog for you to enjoy. You can see them below.
Young, attractive women are probably not the biggest target market for these breweries’ ads, but posters featuring lecherous, nicotine-stained businessmen vomiting into the gutter wouldn’t be to great for sales.

My path seems to be intertwined with a Japanese TV star, Hidehiko Ishizuka (otherwise known as “Ish Chan,”) a tubby funster who eats a lot, smiles so broadly that his eyes disappear, and wears only overalls in the winter.
Everywhere I go, this guy has been there before me. When I visit a restaurant or a bar, there’s a signed photo of him on the wall, posing with the staff. When I go to the over-sized shoe shop, there’s a signed picture of him, grinning down at me. When I go to the big and tall store, (the only place I can buy clothes in Japan due to my height,) Ish-Chan is the model in their brochures!

I suppose we have a lot in common. We’re both tiny-eyed, inanely-grinning gluttons, with an appreciation for food and drink. He’s my doppelganger!
The other day, a friend of mine spotted him strolling down the street, near where we live.
He’s closing in! One day I’ll wake up, look in the mirror, and it won’t be me. Ish-Chan will be staring back at me. Creepy!

Yowser! The people at Corona beer in Japan certainly didn’t hold back when designing their 2005 advertising campaign. The raunchy ads below, with their slogan “grind it in deeper,” seem to be likening the act of pushing a bit of lime into the bottle, to sex. Wow- I’d never made that comparison before, and I’m drooling perv.
Perhaps the pictures might be designed to inspire folks to guzzle a bottle of Corona, just to cool off.
Well, the ads succeeded in sticking in my mind but, to be honest, it wasn’t the Corona I was thinking about.

You can read more about this at Schema Magazine.

Being a puerile person, I snickered at the name of this new Japanese ice cream because of the word “wanko.” It conjures up images of sleazy workers in the factory dropping their pants and doing unsavoury things into the vats of ice cream.

Alternatively, the name sounds like the screams of a motorist whose car is skidding uncontrollably on an icy road. “Wank! Oh no! Ice!”

Then I felt rather ashamed when I found out the name sweetly and innocently translates as “puppy ice cream.”

The guilt subsided, however, when I realized the concept of ice cream for dogs is surely more ridiculous than anything I could have come up with.