Every now and then you get a hot tip on a really good deal. You know, the kind of thing you look at on paper and go, “No, hang on a minute, that can’t be right”. So when Jeremy dropped me an email this week saying that it was necessary we meet this Tuesday for 100 yen beer night, I had trouble comprehending it in all its majesty. 100 yen? Beer? I’m sure the brochures the fundamentalists keep putting through my letterbox said that heaven was somewhere you went after you died.

Turns out it is in fact a real fair dinkum good deal. Every second Tuesday of the month this beer hall in central Kobe called the New München opens up its doors to anyone who is willing to stand in line for an hour or so and lets them drink as many 100 yen beers as they should desire. These aren’t crappy little glasses of watered down swill either, but manly (MANLY!) tankards of german-ish lager, brewed on the premises. As you can imagine, there is quite a demand for such an occasion, hence the lining up deal.

Let me just sidetrack for a second and explain about the Japanese interpretation of a beer hall. Due to the fact that every square centimeter of land in any big city in Japan is probably worth more than the yearly gross domestic produce of Australia, businesses tend to build up rather than out. As such, the hall isn’t really a hall, but rather a collection of large rooms filled with long tables, collected across 8 stories. That’s right, 8 stories of beer hall. Those brochures are looking increasingly convincing.

I think its fairly clear that not many Gaijin know about this particular deal, given that if they did there would be a line of pissed up foreigners stretching for blocks. As it were that particular honour was reserved for the Japanese businessmen who’d obviously got in on the action rather earlier than most others. Watching them stumbling up and down sidewalk muttering things like “It’s cheap, yes, cheap, mmm” before collapsing in heaps could very well be turned into a spectator sport.

Conversation during the evening touched on a variety of topics but as the alcohol flowed it slowly edged towards the, how do you say, “get your head out of the gutter you filthy sleazebag” side of things. I have to say it was both educational and international though, I learnt some expressions I’d never heard before. Then some guy on another table whipped out a mask and some puppets and things took a turn towards the bizarre.

Oh well, sausages being thrown down the high street nonwithstanding, it was a most enjoyable night.

Posted in Mwah on Friday July 16, 2004.

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