Gaijin Tonic

Here’s an amusing liquor-related invention from Japan - a USB key for computers, in the shape of a sake bottle. Guaranteed to distract alcoholic salarymen from their work, and constantly keep the destructive thought of booze alive in their minds. Smart thinking!

This was made by SolidAlliance, a mental company who also brought us such genius contraptions the “Kobe Beef business-card holder” and the rice “omelette mouse cover.”
You can read more about them at Akihabara News

You can still buy beer in vending machines on the street in some places in Japan, but miraculously the kids don’t take advantage. Imagine if such an easy, no-ID-required method of obtaining beer were available in the West- there would be belligerent, shitfaced youths slumped in every street corner, in pools of puke and piss, shouting inanities, rising occasionally to kick in the machines for another beer-buzz. When I asked some Japanese teens why they don’t do this they replied “Oh, that’s because we can’t. It’s against the rules.” Simple as that.
Japanese teens, god bless them, don’t get up to anything worse than giggling in public, (and that’s only the real hardcore rebels.)

Elderly Japanese folks are often whingeing about the state of young people these days, cataloguing gripes about their appalling conduct. Chief among the adolescents’ heinous offences seem to be “sitting on the ground in train stations” (gasp!), “speaking loudly on the telephone,” or…wait for it… “applying their make-up on the train”. Heaven forbid!
Well, if that`s the worst of it, the old wrinklies should count themselves lucky. Compared to the sociopathic, pizza-faced delinquents we have to endure in the rest of the world, Japanese teenagers are sweethearts.

Hip-hop, especially of the domestic variety, is huge in Yokohama. In fact, it’s pretty difficult to avoid, blaring from the windows of newly pimped-out cars, or from the beatboxes of teenagers in over-sized sportswear break-dancing with their reflections in shop windows. J-Hop (or Nip-Hop) is the most happening scene right now. The most popular venue is the evergreen “Yokohama Bay Hall”, the place to be for fans of the amusingly-named local scenesters such as Butcher, Rude Bwoy Face, H-Man, and Moomin.

In Bayhall, you can marvel at Japan’s uninhibited hip-hop fashion at it’s most shameless. Expect lots of girls in flat-caps and terry-towelling jumpsuits, and boys in back-to-front baseball-caps, super-sized jeans and absurdly voluminous T-shirts (thanks to these guys I can buy clothes which actually fit in Japan.) A lack of restraint, and the absence of vocal “player-haters” in Japan has led to a flamboyant street-style of it’s own. It’s OTT and old-skool, and Public Enemy’s Flavor Flav, not previously respected for his sartorial taste, seems to be the style-guru of choice.

There’s an almost entirely Japanese crowd in Bayhall, but it’s a good-natured, friendly scene, despite the moody gangster affectations. Although the rappers have copied the posturing and delivery wholesale from their US counterparts, the gangster ethic has been lost in translation. Most of the lyrics are about love and life-affirmation. For example, one popular local act is called “Murder One”, but they’re more likely to be found in Tokyo Disneyland than in court for a homicide trial. I bet they don’t even litter. Real Japanese gangsters have curly perms and listen to enka.

Info:
Yokohama Bayhall

3-4-17 Shin-Yamashita, Naka-Ku, Yokohama-Shi 231-0801
(045) 624-3900

Visitors to Japan tend to fall prey to the power of booze rather than narcotics, thanks to the scarcity and astronomically high cost of drugs in Japan. That, and terrifying rumours of ludicrously harsh prison sentences for drugs offenses, in jails where inmates get whipped senseless with rubber hoses and have large objects shoved up their bums by cackling sadist guards. Yikes.
So I was surprised recently when a group of English teachers employed by NOVA corporation, were busted for cocaine possession. And I’d like to know how they can afford coke on a teacher’s salary!

When I first came to Japan a few years ago, magic mushrooms were readily available in “head” shops throughout the country, but annoyingly they were banned in time for the 2002 world cup, due to fear of hallucinating foreigners wreaking havoc.
Still, if you’re really desperate, there is readily available a repulsive-tasting legal liquid E concoction. It’s sold in bottles claiming to contain massage-oil, by furtive-looking vendors on the streets of Tokyo. This stuff makes you go nuts for about twenty hours, so you may find yourself boogieing until the next afternoon in sordid after-parties full of recently clocked-off nighclub hostesses and strippers, (which isn’t so bad!) But, on the down side, you also get chronic diarreah.

Here’s a amusingly-named bar in Kawasaki City. Presumably it’s what the people inside say when their Dads come to take them home.

Across Japan there are countless unconventionally-themed novelty bars, which make drinking all the more enjoyable. For instance, I’ve been to a Luther Vandross-themed nighclub, a Frankenstein bar, and a truly macabre restaurant modelled on a prison hospital where, upon arrival, you are handcuffed by girls in nurse-outfits and led to a cell in which you can drink cocktails from test tubes and eat food served in bedpans. A classy joint.

I’ve also been to a bar named “Real” in Fujisawa city, where my table was balanced on top of a large water-tank containing two small, live sharks. I looked down through the perspex at the scary beasts swimming around beneath me while I sipped whiskey. It was like something you’d find in the lair of an evil criminal-mastermind from a James Bond film. It was hard not to imagine the floor sliding away, dropping me to my bloody doom. Later, when I was wasted, I got kicked out of the bar for jumping up and down on the perspex to see if it would break. (I’m a complete dickbrain.)

Info:
Bar Real, Fujisawa 23 Bldg 201, 1-4-3, Kugenumaishigami, Fujisawa 251-0025
Tel: 0466-26-4336

This is a bar sign in Yokohama. I love it because it’s so uninviting- the pig looks as miserable as sin, like a jaded, bloated alcoholic.

I was so awestruck when I found this extremely cheap beer in Okinawa that I had to take a picture. It’s about 80 US cents, or 40 English pence. And to make matters even more brilliant, the bar is near the beach! Sadly, after a couple of hours in the place, in my inebriated state, I forgot to jot down the address. Doh.

Many a well-intentioned westerner has emerged from the arrival gate of Narita airport, suitcase in hand, with dreams of exploring magnificent temples, mastering the art of haiku, or hiking heroicly up Mount Fuji. And yet, within hours of their arrival they find themselves knocking back tequila slammers in a smoke-filled karaoke bar, clothes drenched in sweat and lager, screaming the theme from “Ghostbusters” dissonantly into a microphone in front of cheering, red-faced businessmen.

It happens so easily, you see. Wherever you stay, there’s invariably a cluster of watering holes within stumbling distance of your house, usually open until 5 AM every single night of the week. And it’s hard to resist the temptation to pop out for a drink or ten after being subjected to a few minutes of the mind-numbingly inane variety shows on TV.

Alternatively, you can buy booze 24 hours a day from convenience stores or even vending machines, and you’re free to openly neck cans of lager in the street without the police spoiling the fun. Drink-driving is never a concern because nobody seems to own a car. If you wanted boozing to be any more convenient you’d have to get alcohol pumped into your arm by an intravenous drip.

Like many foreigners, I was overwhelmed by all this freedom when I first showed up in town. Before I knew it I was sucked into a nocturnal world of sybaritic binge-drinking, with a different reason to get plastered every night- birthdays, sporting events, welcoming parties for new colleagues and visiting friends, then “sayonara” parties when they all went back home again.

There’s also a plethora of local festivals and holidays in every season- In Japan people celebrate the coming of spring by getting smashed in parks under the cherry blossom trees. In summer they convene in beer-gardens on the rooftops of department stores, or in hastily constructed wooden bars on the beach. In December they have countless “year end” parties, followed in January by countless “new year” parties.

After all that consumption you’d think Japanese folks would all have livers the size of medicine balls, but in fact they have among the longest life-spans in the world. Apparently the secret to longevity and good health is getting massively shit-faced on a nightly basis.

This wild side of the Japanese is a far cry from their image as buttoned-up workaholics. More often than not, they’re friendly and excitable when they’ve had a skinful, and happy to invite a foreigner to join their table for a tipple. Japan is a land of cheery, fun-loving drunks, who’d sooner sing pop songs than fight. You’re far more likely to witness a breakdancing Elvis impersonator than a bar-room brawl on a friday night in Tokyo. Seriously!

Consequently drinking has no negative associations. It is, in fact, positively encouraged. Some nights after work I’ve gone drinking with Japanese colleagues, and made an exhibition of myself with shameless beer-downing and belching. Yet the following morning, rather than raising their eyebrows, my co-workers have congratulated me on being “a strong drinker.”

With barrels full of booze readily available at all hours and stigma-free, it’s no wonder that unsuspecting visitors have a tendency to go off the rails when they land in Japan. Even the most impeccably well-behaved ex-pat, who may wince at the sordid tales of excess on this site, will begrudgingly admit that when they first arrived on these shores they were rat-arsed for a good month before they realised where they were.