Drinking Under the Bridge

There is something fun about drinking under bridges. It’s a partially concealed underworld not quite out of respectable society yet somehow unsavory at times. This establishment isn’t exactly under the bridge, but very near one. A very loud one with JR trains passing every few minutes. Perhaps that’s why it’s so cheap…well I can’t say the sounds of the trains were that noticeable inside, so maybe there’s some other historical reason. But this place is a real dive. In the first picture to the right, it might look harmless enough, but check out the picture below showing the area:

It’s the one all the way on the right; yes, the one that doesn’t have any awning lights. At first, you might assume that this is an accident, and that they forgot to turn them on. Then maybe you might think that it’s intentional as they have a second floor that might be bothered by the lights, or that they prefer the darker atmosphere — shadows being crucial to the Japanese aesthetic, after all. But after you go inside, you can only say they just don’t care enough to replace the bulbs.

Why is this the only rational conclusion? Well, check out the ‘menu’ on the wall shown to the right. Have those items been changed or adjusted in the last ten years? Other than them falling off and not being replaced, that is. Yes, they for sure fell of and were not replaced. I couldn’t get a picture because of the close quarters and other customers, but they are still on the floor below. Really. They are now slowly becoming a part of the floor, as all fallen garbage that has come before. I should mention that this is a ‘standing bar’ meaning that there are no seats and no mandatory food charge (most non-stanading-bar establishments give an ‘otoshi’ — a small kind of ‘amuse bouche’ — except that they charge for it). It also means that it is difficult to get a good picture of the floor without looking like (and actually being, honestly) a complete idiot. So as the resident idiot of this blog, here is a bad picture of the floor closer to where I was standing:

It’s hard to say exactly what objects the extremely thick grime on the floor originally belonged to, but worry not; judging from the drops of liquid, it is likely mostly food-and-beverage derived. Then again, those drops of liquid could be anything…it’s the middle of summer, so maybe sweat. Or judging from the patron to my right, it could easily be liquefied human misery which seemed to be seeping from his pores as he drank enormous amounts of the cheapest shouchuu I have found in any bar to date. A common trend which I found to be interesting at this bar was for people to reach into their pockets, pull out whatever small change they had (always somewhere between 500 and 2000 yen), toss it onto the upper shelf of the bar, and say, “kore de,” meaning, “from this,” with the implication being that they would drink until the money on the counter ran out. This put a limit on the amount they would spend, and also ensured that their bill was paid when they were far too drunk to walk or even breathe correctly, let alone pay a bar tab. Win-win, right? Almost everyone was drinking cheap shouchuu mixed with either tea (oolong or green), soda water, lemon and water, or just over ice — everyone uses ice with this shouchuu. The mixing was done by the customer, and the shouchuu and non-alcoholic beverages were sold separately (with neither exceeding 200 yen). Already being inebriated, and after seeing the minimum serving size that ‘less than 200 yen’ would buy, we did our livers a favor and opted to split a large bottle of beer costing 250 yen (a terrible yen-to-alcohol ratio by comparison but still cheaper than the grocery store, amazingly). The bar itself was possible the only thing without an astounding amount of grime and filth covering it, but I am inclined to believe that is through constant use rather than maintenance on the part of the two brothers that own the place (they work and live there, too).

The brother’s were friendly and engaged in banter with the patrons as much as they could all the while salting fish to be baked, pulling miscellaneous food items out of a dubious refrigerator (shown in the right of the picture on the left, here) and performing various culinary tasks to create the dishes the drunken customers were hungry for. It might seem surprising  to you that everyone was ordering food when the kitchen was so spectacularly filthy, but I decided to follow suit as I was a tad peckish and drunk enough not to care too much — and so was everyone else. I ordered some broiled salmon and waited for perhaps 20 very long minutes for it to arrive as they were quite busy — did I mention that they have a second floor upstairs? One of the brothers would routinely disappear to this netherworld above for interminable periods of time, prior to which he would say, “chotto matte, chotto, chotto,” meaning, “wait a bit, a bit, a bit,” prompting the brother at one point to confide to a group of business men, “chotto matte no onii-san,” or, “he’s the wait-a-bit brother.” Which got a hearty drunken laugh, of course.

The salmon was extremely salty, but I was grateful for the salt. Given the conditions, I felt like the salt would protect me from pathogens unknown. Also, I had sweat a lot on that hot summer day and salt and alcohol are a good pair, right? All in all, this place is a really crazy dive. A rarity in Japan, and definitely worth a visit if you want to see some really impressive filth while drinking some of the cheapest booze you are likely to find in the city.