About drinking

This is a transcript from a newsletter I received from the American Embassy in Tokyo:

"Our Consulate General in Osaka provided the following information to us. We are repeating it for your information. The Consulate General received it from the Kyoto Prefectural Government (http://www.pref.kyoto.jp). We are repeating here verbatim as it may be of interest to you.

Begin Quote
Drink Driving [sic] Warning
There have been a number of high profile drink-driving related incidents reported in the news of late. These have mainly involved automobiles, but what many foreign residents do not realize is that drink-driving with a bicycle is also forbidden by law. Due to the recent incidents, police have been clamping down on drink-driving in all forms, so that those that drink-drive with a bicycle now run a severe risk of a 3-year prison sentence or a fine of 500,000 yen. The message is simple, if you drink, never drive!
End Quote"

You will probably think it's funny, but the background is no joke. There is one big "elephant in the room" in Japanese society: alcoholism.

Drinking seems to be one of the pillars on which social interaction is built (the other three are: smoking; hostess bars for men; and shopping for women). Being trashed several nights a week carries no stigma, it rather proves that you know how to enjoy life. Coworkers barely speak to each other during business hours. But after a 14-hour day, everyone goes drinking together and the sorrows (and conflicts) of the day get drowned in alcohol.

There is actually a term to describe a fairly common business practice: "nomiwashi". This is a combination of "nomimasu" (to drink) and "nemawashi" (to reach a consensus prior to having a meeting when a decision is supposed to be made, by having endless pre-meetings to the pre-meetings to the pre-meetings, so the decision will effectively have been made before the official decision-making meeting even starts). I know this sounds complicated... But remember, this is Japan. As a foreigner you are not supposed to understand it. But trust me on this one: the most important decisions in business (and I guess in politics) are made when the key parties involved are only half-conscious and slurring their words.

Anyway, drinking way past the tipping point is a perfectly acceptable activity that friends and coworkers share. It is not perceived as a problem, which is quite puzzling considering how prone the Japanese are to following health fads: tofu is good for your eyes, seaweed is good for your skin, gargling several times a day keeps you from catching a cold, oolong tea is energizing, green tea is soothing (or the other way around?), sweating purifies your body, a long bath every night makes you stress-free. But alcohol.... alcohol is carefully omitted from any list of "good" or "bad" things for you. (And so is tobacco, by the way.)

Here's a few factoids about drinking in Japan:

- When a group of people are drinking together and someone gets sick beyond consciousness, someone in the party will walk (or carry) them out to the street, put them in a taxi, and come back to the bar to continue drinking. Taxi drivers don't get mad if you throw up in the car, they just have a flat fee they charge to clean up after you.

- A man lying unconscious on the sidewalk with his dark suit still on and his briefcase on the floor next to him (or under his head doubling as pillow) is a perfectly ordinary sight after midnight. People just walk past them. If you try to check if they are still breathing people look at you as if you had just arrived from another planet.

- It is not unusual for otherwise normal people to end up in the hospital from time to time to get rehydrated through IV after being found unconscious in a bar's bathroom.

- Drunk driving (as noted on the verbatim from the Kyoto Prefectural Government) is a serious crime. People driving in the car (who are not driving) also face serious fines for allowing the drunk person to get behind the wheel.

- There is something worse than drinking... NOT drinking! At a recent dinner with colleagues I asked for an iced tea while everyone else was pouring down all kinds of liquors. After confirming that a) I was not pregnant and b) I was not driving home, I had a hard time convincing people that I was feeling just fine and simply wasn't in the mood for drinking.

- The price of spirits: a bottle of vodka = $12; a bottle of decent wine = $15; two liters of shochu (a Japanese cousin of vodka) = starts at $20; a six pack of Asahi (Asahi is to Japan what Budweiser to the US) = $18... and a pint of Guinness = $9 (yes, NINE dollars for a glass of beer!)

SALUD!