All across Tokyo and big cities in Japan there are many snack bars and izakaya. These places are mostly patron by Japanese as most foreigners would prefer western style discos and bars.

I still do not know why some bars in Japan are called snacks, probably they serve snack food together with alcohol. Izakaya are Japanese style drinking place where they serve Japanese food as well which goes well with beer and sake like the yakitori.

I prefer places like the Izakaya as it is cheaper and where students normally hangout on weekends. We could imagine how the place could turn to be very noisy when students started to get drunk and making funs of themselves.

The session will normally go to second round or third round until everyone were too drunk to do anything. As long as I can remember there was not a single function where there was no karaoke session. Japanese are so fond of karaoke and almost everybody would have their favorite karaoke song. Do you know that karaoke originate from Japanese word, kara for empty and oke for orchestra, well it’s a combination of Japanese and English actually.

If we walk along some empty streets we will come across one or two snack bars. It seems that the places are located at abandoned area but they do have regular customers who are mostly salarymen or office workers. Some of these places would have a karaoke sets for their customers and we could hear some torturing sound of Japanese songs from the bars nearby.

Those days the bars would usually close around midnight or just in time for the workers to catch the last train home. However Tokyo is also regarded as the city never sleeps where there are also places where clubs, discos and bars would still open until the next morning. Businessmen would normally treat their clients or business prospects in this type of places and this kind of places are not cheap and I have never been to one. We could just imagine how much money was spent on entertainment and not surprisingly Japan was the world number one economic power during the time.

Liquors are widely consumed in Japan. There are vending machines for beers too but surprisingly these machines are programmed to sell until 12 midnight. But we hardly hear any alcohol related crime or abuse.

I’m not an expert on alcohol or liquor drink but Japanese sake taste a lot better that any rice wine from any other country in the world. Some said it is because of the quality of the water they use to make the wine.

Working hard during the day time and drink a lot after work is part of the Japanese culture which others find hard to understand. Where do they get the energy to work hard and play hard at the same time. There was an TV advertisement which with phrases like ganbatte ganbatte shigoto, ganbatte ganbatte asobi. After a late night drinking, Japanese worker would be back in the office the next morning.

I used to think where are all the funs when most of the time we are all focus in work and night drinking which is of course mostly are work related. Obviously Japanese do have time for other things and hobbies. They have very good hobbies and will at least go for overseas vacation at least once a year.

After learning that Japanese working life is so much hectic, I tried to make full use of my time when I was a student. I managed to visit all the major cities and sometimes I participated in the homestay programs where student were given a chance to stay with a Japanese family and learning their way of life.

In my coming postings I will share some others things like Japanese everyday life and how we feel about and how much we understand  them.