Izakaya(居酒屋): Japan’s Party Centers

For Josten’s birthday, a bunch of us went to an Izakaya in Machida.

What is an Izakaya? Well, in Japan, it is essentially a bar that sells food. The kanji for it is 居酒屋, I don’t know the first kanji, but the 2nd one is “sake” the alcoholic beverage and the 3rd one is “room”. You sit down at tables, and depending on which one you go to, you may either sit in chairs or on the floor. Some have private rooms but most are just open air with other groups of people behind something like a small wooden barrier. You can pay a fee for 2 hours of all-you-can-drink alcoholic beverages, and is the best deal as long as you keep the drinks coming. Most izakayas serve all manner of drinks, like fuzzy navels, whiskey sours, and gin & tonics, to name a few. The food selection ranges anywhere from sashimi to hamburgers, to salads and miso soup. Izakayas are, for the most part, packed many nights of the week with college students and salarymen coming after work to enjoy a few drinks and good food with some friends. So you can imagine slightly cramped, smoke-filled rooms with waiters running around with full or empty drink glasses, people yelling and talking, and just a general social atmosphere not unlike a loud and chaotic get-together of some sort. Bars in America have nothing on Izakayas. You stand at a bar, get a drink, no food, and its uncomfortable. An Izakaya is not just a solution to many of the common problems the American bar has, but is also an institution.

We got all-you-can-drink for 2 hours(nomihodai),  lots of large Suntory malted beers(best beer imo), and a lot of food for 2500 yen. A very good deal, about 20 USD. This was perhaps my 5th time going to an Izakaya in Japan, and it always ends up the same: everyone gets drunk, some get trashed. After a few cups of beer, I was in party mode, as was everyone else. In the picture above, there is Edamame, some kind of bean sprout dish, some chow-mein, and some tofu thing. There was yakitori and some other stuff, I don’t remember what exactly. There was definately more food than we could eat, and we ended up picking at it as the night wore on.

A few photos:

From left to right: Yuima, Josten(his birthday, turned 21), and Sakako.

From left to right: Brandt, Randon, some girl I didn’t get around to meeting, Matt, and Azusa.

From left to right: Maria, me(Justin Chan), Kenny, and Kurara. My hair was in pretty bad shape after walking to school in the hot sun and the sweat kind of messed it up.

There is a video floating somewhere on someone’s Facebook of me dancing with Josten. There was more people there, but I neglected to take a photo of them. My bad.

To those who come to Japan in the future and meet up with or make some friends here, one of the places you will probably find yourself at is an Izakaya. It is always a party waiting to happen, without a lot of the hassles. On a side note, Suntory is probably the best beer brand here in Japan, in my opinion. On a final note, the Hub in Machida closed. Sad to see it go, the next semester international students will not know the joy of the Hub. Many good times were had and I met most of my friends there.