Here’s an ad for Asahi beer featuring a very young Mel Gibson drinking a can of lager in the desert.
he looks so pale and sickly, I suspect he’d had a few bottles the night before, too. (Probably out drunk-driving again.) At one point Mental Mel looks like he’s about to throw up, which is probably not the sensation the advertisers were trying to sell, I suspect.
Old Mel Gibson Beer Ad
July 30, 2008
5 Comments | 
Alcohol, Celebrities, Japan, Videos | 
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Posted by Roaf
More Weird Drinks
July 29, 2008
Steve at Inventorspot has come up with a mind-boggling list of of weird Japanese drinks, most of which even I have not heard of, including a bust-boosting mango-flavoured drink for teenage girls (oh shit, that’s what it is? I think I drank that. Now I know why I’m growing man-boobs!); eel-flavoured soda (Excuse me while I puke. Hey, you could play pranks with this- give it to a friend with a hangover, tell them it’s cola, sit back and watch ‘em spew!) and “Needs” cheese drink (Enough said.)
2 Comments | Crazy, drinking, Japan, Weird | Tagged: Add new tag | Permalink
Posted by Roaf
Beach Bars and Beer Gardens
July 21, 2008Yay! Summer is here.
This means that, although I frequently get so sunburned I look like a spit-roasted pig and I wake up every day on a futon so with soaked with sweat that you could sautee it, I can also spend the next few weeks hitting the beach bars and rooftop beer gardens of Japan.
On Saturday I went to Kudan Kaikan, which is a large beer garden on the roof of a building near Kudanshita subway station, with a nice view of Kitanomaru park. But who cares about that when you can drink as much as you like in 90 minutes for 2100 yen, and get served by girls dressed as Playboy bunnies?
Kudan Kaikan closes early, at about ten, but a bit of cheap, al-fresco drinking is a fine way to start an evening before heading elsewhere. The food is expensive and not that special, though, so I’d recommend eating before or after you go there.
I’m also looking forward to hitting the beach bars of the Shonan area of Kanagawa, around Enoshima, Zushi and Kamamkura.
Many of my female friends hate these beaches because they are dirty, cluttered with gaudy wooden beach bars, and overcrowded with drunk university students in swimwear, setting off fireworks. I, on the other hand, like these beaches because they are dirty, cluttered with gaudy wooden beach bars, and overcrowded with drunk university students in swimwear, setting off fireworks. Quite what the beach bunnies make of the pale, bloated, priapic 31 year old foreigner in their midst, I don’t know, but I’m not complaining about a place where I can drink Corona in the company of girls dressed only in bikinis, high heels and cowboy hats.
Read more about beach bars.
Read more about beer gardens.
Kudan Kaikan Beer Garden
1-6 Kudan Minami, Chiyoda-ku
Tel: (03) 3261-5521
Kudanshita Station, Exit 4
Open daily from 17:00-22:00
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Posted by Roaf
Toki 80′s Bar
July 9, 2008I’ve discovered a tremendous 80s bar in Tokyo’s Sangenjaya. They play classic music all night long, by the likes of Depeche Mode and the Cure. And it’s a “1 coin bar” which means all drinks and food are only 500 yen, and there’s no service charge. The bar is called Toki’s, after the amiable barman who runs the place. Toki looks much too young to have actually been around in the 80s.
I often round off the night with a drink in Toki’s, and inevitably end up chatting to solitary middle aged women, who were into the cheesy pop music the first time round. (These recurring drunken conversations can only lead to no good!)
A nice touch in Toki bar is the big, phone-book-sized list of songs from which you can make requests. It’s fun picking out old favourites, singing along, and wallowing in nostalgia. There’s all sorts of obscure stuff to choose from in that mammoth-sized catalogue, pretty much any tune you could imagine from the 80s. They’ve even got songs by New Order and the Police- sung in Japanese! Sting singing “Do Do Do, Da Da Da” in Nihongo is quite a mind-mashing thing to hear after too many cheap cocktails. I thought I was suffering from some kind of incurable brain-disaster.
Best of all, Toki has an unbelievably cheap happy hour everyday between 7 and 9PM (even on weekends.) Drinks are only 300 yen, which is a Godsend to a poverty-stricken wretch like me.
Toki 80′s Bar
Tel: 03-3487-4665
Open 19:00-04:00
18 Comments | Alcohol, Bar Reviews, Cool, drinking, Fun, Japan, Tokyo | Tagged: 80s music, Bar Reviews, Eighties, Sangenjaya, Tokyo | Permalink
Posted by Roaf
