Sleepless in Tokyo

 

[image error]

Three Bar Entrances on a Golden Gai Street

Tokyo people are known for being hard workers. They get to work early, before the boss arrives, and stay late, until after the boss leaves. This often means ten, eleven, twelve-hour days. Almost as a counterweight to this characteristic is how gregarious they are when it’s time to clock-out and they head for the bars. You can see how hard they play on the trains late at night. At eleven o’clock on most weekdays the mass transit system is packed, shoulder-to-shoulder, with office workers in their black suits and black dresses gripping handholds, sleepy, drunk, and a little more disheveled than when they started the day.

[image error]

Vending machine for cat scarves

There are pockets of festivity in the train station at midnight as the wife and I make our way to our destination. We pass a group of businessmen celebrating, tossing one of their coworkers into the air like a football team lifting their winning quarterback.

 

 

We take the Yamanote line to Shinjuku Station and then walk five minutes to the Golden Gai neighborhood. What is Golden Gai? A bar hoppers paradise, a home for lonely hearts, and a great place to spend an overnight layover from Narita Airport. Sort of the Japanese version of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, Golden Gai is the all-night “tiny bar street”, made up of 280 individual bars packed inside a few narrow lanes.

[image error]

A Golden Gai Alley

How do they pack that many bars into a city block? As you can imagine, each bar is pretty small. The average bar is the size of a thin bedroom with five or six stools facing a countertop, bartender, and shelves of liquor. The walls are usually decked out with Christmas lights, beer posters, and various chachkies.

The Japanese like intimate settings, and many come to Golden Gai for a drink and chat with their favorite bartender. It’s customary to buy your server a drink for long sessions. About half the bars charge tourist and US military personnel a cover to try to keep out the many loud, lightweight, young foreigners who treat the area like a Spring Break bash.

Most of the bars have emptied out by 1:00AM Thursday. We find an empty place with a welcoming bartender, who says her name is “Eddie” (spelled Eri). Eddie speaks minimal English but understands “rum and coke”. She says she doesn’t own the bar – of course she works for someone who can afford slice of property in the middle of Tokyo. Eddie goes to sleep at 9:00AM and wakes up at 4:00PM and only works part-time.

A few minutes after starting on our drinks, a couple enters and take up seats. The woman asked where we’re from. Her name is Yuri and the man she is with, Yoh, is her boss. They are physicians who work the graveyard shift at a burn treatment center. Yuri is the more outgoing of the two, perhaps because she speaks English better or perhaps it’s that old tradition in Japan of subordinates being able to take control after work. While Yoh sits quietly by, Yuri tells us about her job, all the places she’s traveled, and how she likes studying languages. She’s obviously very talented and has a rare outgoing confidence.

One thing I notice is that we’re on our third drink after a time, while Yuri and Yoh are still nursing their first one. They know moderation. After an hour of casual conversation, Yuri and Yoh head out. About an hour later we leave to find a taxi.

[image error]

Trash bins full of proof that Tokyo people like to have a good time 

 

[image error]

Sashimi Breakfast

At 4:00AM we make our way to the Tsukiji fish market, an area of butcheries, cutleries, sushi and noodle stalls. Tsukiji is the world’s biggest fish market, it’s been around since the Edo Period, and it’s experiencing changing times. The city wants to move the market to a new location. Foreigners can no longer watch the live auctions, where Bluefin tuna are sold for tens of thousands of dollars. But most of the shops are still here and tourist still get up early to watch the activity and try a bowl of fresh sashimi.

[image error]

8:00AM Train Ride Back to Work