Keep me in your thoughts.  I’ve developed a drinking problem in Japan.

Before I get into the details I should give you a few tidbits of information about drinking in Japan.  1) It seems to be expected that all men (and many women) will drink to insane excess on a regular basis. It’s expected.  2) The legal blood alcohol limit for legal driving in Japan isn’t zero but it is so close that it is just best to never drink and drive.  In theory, I’m a big fan of no legal drinking and driving.  There will always be plenty of illegal drinking and driving in any country, unfortunately.  If you happen to live in a Japanese city or even the town that you happen to be drinking in, Japan is a great place for zero alcohol tolerance when driving.  Cities have amazing public transportation and it often runs until the wee hours of the night.  When that stops, there are always plenty of taxis prowling the mostly deserted streets.  If you live in smaller towns or rural locales your best bets are taxis or my favorite, “daiko”.  You make a call to the “daiko” service and they send someone to drive your car home.  When I lived in Japan 10 or so years ago, they drove you home in your own car.  It was great.  For what I assume are insurance reasons, now someone drives your car home and you ride in the “daiko” company’s car.  It’s still a good deal.  You get a ride and your car ends up safely home for a little more than the price of a taxi.

Where Satomi and I live there are places that you can go for a drink and walk home.  We haven’t actually been to any of them but they do exist.  The problem for us is that all of our friends live at least a 45 minute drive from where we live.  If we go to meet people for dinner and drinks one of us has to drive home.  Satomi doesn’t like to drive and she really really doesn’t like to drive at night.  I’m a fairly nice guy so I give in and agree to drive home (and too dinner for that matter).  We are too far away and too stingy (not to mention underfunded) to pay for “daiko” for that long of a drive.  We could stay at a hotel but that is pretty pricey too.  So, Satomi drinks (sometimes with her friends and sometimes with mine) and has a jolly old time.  The first few times that we went out I just sipped my green tea happily and hovered on the edge of the drunken conversation. It was nice to be out but I was on a different frequency from the rest of the group.  Sipping green tea just doesn’t make me a boisterous member of a drinking party.  The good part of that was that I was up and ready to conquer the world early the next morning with no lingering effects from the night before.  I was basically happy but I longed to have a drink with friends.

Then came that fateful night.  I was out with a group of eight or so friends in a town about an hour from where I live.  I had to drive home later so I was planning to go alcohol free.  Just for kicks I decided to look at the cocktail menu.  There are always some overpriced juice concoctions that serve as alternatives to the alcoholic ones.  Then, below the cocktails, I saw it!

キリンフリ ノンアルコール！

Or, as we would write it in English, Kirin Free non alcohol.  It had been many years since I tried a no alcohol brew but I was ready to take the plunge.  I ordered one.  It was pretty good…not amazing but satisfying.  Malty enough that if I didn’t think about it too much I really forgot that it wasn’t beer and it had a pretty decent flavor.  The can looks like a beer can.  It is made with malt and by a beer company.  I guess it allowed me to feel “contact tipsy” from being a part of the group. I wasn’t the life of the party, I never am, but I was a functioning memeber of the Japanese rite of inebriation and that made everyone, including me, happy. And, because it is truly 0% alcohol, I could drive home.  As a bonus, I felt great the next day.

After that I had it a few more times when I was out for dinner.  Then, strangely, I started craving it while I was sitting at home in the evening so I bought a few cans and they went down so easily.  If I had had a case I probably would have just kept drinking. I’m drinking one as I write this. In fact, I may have chosen to write this as a way for feel good about indulging.  After all, I needed to take a picture of the can so that you could see it.  As Yoda might say, “The subconscious is strong with this one it is”. I feel enough like I am having a beer to be satisfied but I still keep my initiative.  If I have a beer or a glass of wine or sake, I can’t seem to muster the energy to do any meaningful work. That isn’t always bad, I just always seems to have something I want to get done in the evening.  But, that isn’t really my drinking problem.  Here is my drinking problem.  It costs almost two dollars for a one can of Kirin Free if you buy it at the convenience store.  It is a few cents cheaper at the super market.  I want to drink it every night…but I’ve have become what they call “ketchy” here in my corner of Japan.  I am “cheap” or call it frugal if you want to put a nice spin on it.  I can’t bring myself to pay two dollars a day to support my drinking habit.  Since we have come to Japan we have slowly weaned ourselves from some of our egregious American spending habits because we have to stretch our paychecks and savings.  It’s been great…except for the Kirin free.  For the price of thirty cans (a months supply), I can buy enough kerosene to keep us warm for that same month.  Winter is cold.  I am choosing warmth.  I imagine that when summer comes I will most likely choose air conditioning over my beloved Kirin Free and, that too, will probably be a good choice.  It’s a hard life but I’ll face my challenges one day at a time.  Hope you do the same.

-The Green Tea Dreamer