the self-centered union culture of the French SNCF, it's another galaxy here, like the attentive train staff being on the platform checking that everything goes fine and jumping to respond to any enquiring passenger, or the ticket controller bowing at each end of the passager cars before-and-after checking the tickets. But like for many things Japanese, an authentic art-de-vivre keeps living side by side with the high work-ethic and the technology : the ritual of eki-bento lunch boxes that people take out during their train trips has no equivalent I know in Western Europe, and it seems closer to what I saw in Russia, where families and friends enjoy this sense of excitement and togetherness on trains with picnics. Specialized shops in train stations sell all sort of eki-bento boxes, with, of course, the sake that will make you meal taste even better. Since the Ozeki sake brewery invented the single-serve size labelled "One Cup" in the 1960s', drinking sake while on the move has been easier. This "drink and run" culture is not limited to the salarymen universe anymore but melted into the mainstream. I loved what an expat wrote humourously somewhere about these single-serve sake cups : "You know you've lost your soul when you sit on the train sipping one of those babies." Well, it may be true that you don't always have the best quality of sake in this format but this particular one made a very pleasant drink with the sushi lunch box, believe me...
There's a sake and spirits shop on the Nishiki Market covered arcade in Kyoto where you can buy sake in bulk ! The Nishiki market is a well-known alley with top-quality foods including fresh seafood, tea and other Japanese delicacies, it is a bit touristic but still really worth the detour. The sake shop sells a very good choice of spirits and sake, including sake in bulk (in the winter season at least). I just realized that the sake in the cedar cask (taru) on the left/front is the same than the cup that I bought before boarding the train. It was made in Fushimi, the sake district in Kyoto. You can see the empty bottles on the top of the cask with labels saying "bottled from the cask", and a sign indicates the price for a glass (525 Yen), a small bottle (300ml : 735 Yen), a normal bottle (70cl : 1732 Yen), and a traditional bottle (1,8L : 3465 Yen). 1000 Yen make 6,5 Euro or 9,3 USD. The other Taru in the background is a sake named "Northern Snow".
The same shop sells sake in bulk from what looks like a stainless-steel tank with nitrogen protection. This one is named "imanomu shiawase", which means something like "some happiness to drink now", a nice poetic name, too bad we didn't try it...
Japan is still mostly a sake-drinking country. Trends among the younger generation point to tastes which are closer to the Western hemisphere, like sparkling drinks, beers and wines. But you may know that many Japanese have trouble to handle alcohol because of genetic conditions, their liver having a harder time to process alcohol and additives. While in Japan you may have witnessed this phenomenon several times, a salaryman in a restaurant, or a friend in a private party suddenly "flushing", that is, getting red-faced after a couple or more of glasses : this is the "asian flush". This very interesting Japanese study explains that in addition to genetic predispostions, additives have a lot to do with the hangover-risk that Japanese drinkers are confronted to. The Japanese research points to the varying numbers of additives as a powerful explanation for the hangover and the asian flush :
"According to Fuke (1994), many kinds of admixture in alcoholic beverages brings a man/woman to a hangover because it acts on the central nervous system. He also states that sake and wine contain many admixtures. Itokawa (1992) reports the data of comparison between those and beer. For example, the organic acid in sake is three times as much quantity as that in beer, and that in wine is from four to twenty five times as much quantity as that in beer." The study continues with pointing to whisky and cognac having very few additives and being safer on this regard. I think that the success of natural wines in Japan is partly explained by this health issue : while most of us in the Western hemisphere don't feel physically (yet) the consequences of consumption of additives-filled wines, the Japanese have this well-timed asian-flush signal to put them on the right track.
This is a Mandarake shop, 
in Tokyo, a temple for the Moe people who read mangas and feel connected to the virtual world. The Shibuya Mandarake shop, which is located on the Hachiko exit side of the JR Yamanote station, is only a stone's throw from another shopping magnet of the area, the Tokyu Hands depato. It is a basement shop selling thousands of manga, anime and figurines (some of them are even "antiques"). This is the equivalent of the Vatican library for an otaku, and if all the books weren't sealed, they would be sitting all over the place to read all day...8 such aisles packed floor to ceiling with mangas, plus several window shelves full of figurines, enough for a lifetime of virtual world. We knew that several of these manga were wine centered and happilly, the staff knows where to find every book, and we bought a couple of them. They're filled with stories featuring real wines with drawings of the bottles and labels, from a Griotte-Chambertin Grand Cru, Domaine Ponsot 1990 to a Richebourg Grang Cru 1959 by Henri Jayer, you'll travel into the world of fine wines, most of them from Burgundy and Bordeaux even if I spotted other wines like a California Opus One in the stories. But my real surprise was to see there bottles from one of Paris' best wine shops : a "Bourgogne Hautes Côtes de Nuits récolte 2002, Selectionné par Caves Augé".... These manga writers are really well informed, or they live in Paris.. The manga on the picture above is one from a serie featuring a female sommelier. Japanese women had a sizeable role in the increasing interest for wines in Japan, and you also see many women there interested in becoming sommelier. Speaking of sommeliers, there has been so much hype around the word in Japan that the title has begun to apply to many other fields. This recent article of the Japan Times points how in a country like Japan where titles are very important, sommelier as a title became a new niche : you can even find "Onsen- (hot springs) sommeliers" or "cell-phone sommeliers"...
Bert - Loved this post!
Posted by: Jack at F & B | February 18, 2008 at 05:57 AM
Bert, I can relate to much of what you wrote in this phenomenal post. Having visited Tokyo twice for professional reasons, I could not be more amazed by not only the Japanese work ethic but also their ability to consume alcohol in a mostly fun and relaxed way. Needless to say, I had a difficult time keeping up with my fellow Japanese co-workers... they certainly always made sure I was having a good time. I also saw a great interest in wine, including how it is produced.
Posted by: Marco Montez | February 18, 2008 at 02:41 PM