Japanese Drinking Culture: Standing Bars, Kampai Etiquette, & Retro Drinks in Tokyo

[Music] hi welcome to japan by food i'm your host shusika anderson and today we're joined by a special guest max welcome i'm max thanks for inviting me to do this i'm excited i'm so happy to have you because if you guys haven't known i started out on youtube on max's channel it's all thanks to me [Laughter] taking things to the next level we're doing everything on our own we have a lot of exciting things to do today do you know what our main topic is today well i was told we're gonna be drinking and doing a lot of uh education about drinking cultures so i'm down for that awesome that's exactly what we're gonna do so we've both been living in japan for about 10 years now so i think we can share a few tips for you about japanese drinking culture and our first location is a japanese izakaya what better place to talk about drinking culture and after that we're gonna go to another location in asakusa and learn about a very historical drink so look forward to that all right i'm excited let's do it yes let's go [Music] all right we are now at motsuyaki otomba which is an izakaya it's a quaint little izakaya here in ueno um it's a little bit old-fashioned looking and we're gonna do the japanese thing which is tachinomi let's start with drinks shall we uh i was gonna get the stamachi high balls the whiskey club soda makes this is a pretty good classic in japan very nice and i'm going to get a beer because in japan they have a saying today so you normally you start with beer when you do a drinking i'm breaking the rules he's breaking the rule but i'm going to stick to the role and this place is famous for something called horumon which is basically innards the intestine like this kidney count is hormone yeah that's nasal all organs organs are hormone i would love to get some liver which is which is heart heart so let's try the motsunikomi which is kind of a stewed motsu dish and apparently this is one of their famous menus this is usually a pretty good like drinking food kumiyase combination yay we just got our drinks i've got myself a namabiru which means draft beer from the tap and you've got your high ball ball high ball whiskey club soda one important tip here is you're never supposed to drink before you've compiled like before you've toasted or cheered so this is very important if you're at a group situation it's actually kind of rude to drink before you come by so and you'll be sent by i'll be kauai so i have to use two hands this is the proper way okay so i'm senpai we go lower but you know lower sometimes [Music] that's like a thing that you do for fun in jess that's comfortable yes so come by ah that's so nice i love beer we've just got our food we have some delicious looking skewers and a pot of stew mozu nico meat yeah this looks pretty good actually it does look really good so this is intestines um but this is a very common ingredient in a lot of stews in japan it looks like meat but this is it's mozus but it doesn't look you know it looks like beef often hodomon is part of a is a very common drinking food this one is the heart then now this one was the tongue which is generally beef tongue tongue is a very popular meat in japan it's very good they usually cook it until it's very nice and tender this is liver liver how are you with liver max once got food poisoning from liver however i still like it well but it took a while to recover from that one it was my fault because you're supposed to cook the lever yourself where i went and i think i just undercooked it so i know liver is really good so oh you have to cook it yourself that's risky that was the downfall oh when you come to japan have them cook the hotend one for you if you're gonna share food in japan we usually have a set of communal chopsticks that we don't use to eat with we just use it to split up the food and in japan we also typically use torii torizada is actually a really good japanese word to know it means like a extra plate to use to share food so if you get a plate where everyone shares then everybody gets a torizara and then you can put it on your own plate [Music] and now i can eat some tacos i'm actually kind of impressed no i don't like it he doesn't like me that much it tastes really good it's the texture i appreciate your honesty on this channel any of you who think i'm not being honest i like what i like and i like most things not very picky but i don't really like to eat meat very much but you know if you just drink it down with your your beer you won't even know japanese people drink a lot of alcohol especially beer you know when we go drinking together like this uh when the drinks come out first if i'm closer to the drinks then you're my senpai you know i would get the cup first and then i would bring it to you and then like we already showed you know take two hands when you come by that's right hold one hand on the handle and one hand usually supporting the bottom and another thing i'll add just right now is i notice your beer is already down halfway this is the part where i would ask you uh would you like another view whenever you notice their drinks are going low make sure to pick up on that or if you've noticed like their plates are empty then that's an opportunity for you to you know serve them a little bit more like oh here take a few more serve them so before we move on let's take a bite of this molten ave it smells amazing oh it smells like a like a stew that's been cooked for hours this is the intestine stew that's been stewed very well for hours let's take a bite itadakimasu i think it's part of it might be actually meat mixed with mozu i would say this is a good drinking food because it's not too much it's warm it's more of like that interesting flavor and you'll be done with it you can share it you'll be done with it soon and just keep drinking taste wise it's delicious some of the bits were like really really soft yeah we should ask what's in here [Music] um [Music] is let's finish up our drinks and finish up our food and then let's move on to our next location in asakusa yeah come back oh you got me [Music] and we're now on a street called hopidori which means happy street and hoppy is actually named after a japanese drink have you ever had hopi i've had hopi a couple times not a big fan because it's a little bit like the tops are strong it's quite happy our plan for today is to try a hoppy drink somewhere and there's a lot of really cool bars out here with a lot of outdoor seating very festive vibe so let's see what kind of cool places we can find [Music] this is white this is black this is white and that's black this is how it comes the shoju is already poured that's right typically this is what i was told it's about one-third shochu when you mix hopefully so today our special drink of the day and it's a very historical drink is hoppy and hoppy it it literally means hoppy in english so it's made out of the hops that you use to make beer so it tastes like beer but it is not actually beer and it's non-alcoholic the reason why this became popular in japan is because after the war um everybody was very poor and they didn't have money to afford beer anymore so they made a cheaper alternative which is non-alcoholic and you just get a little bit of that beer flavor that very slightly alcohol very like less i think it's like 0.8 or something like that it's a very low amount um but yeah it's like a non-alcoholic beer tasting drink to make it alcoholic we mix it with shochu or japanese vodka so you're the kohai in this case and i'm the senpai this is one way to do it but also i will explain for hope specifically mixing hopi and like chochi drinks i'm supposed to just do it for you like this okay i don't want the bubbles to go oh so it's actually carbonated and i'm supposed to mix it for you oh awesome it actually looks a fair bit like beer it's a little bit the color's a little bit different but and then i say it foams in in a case where you know we have a mutual respect for each other we might go in for each other okay okay here we go okay so i'm gonna pour your hopi and one thing that we normally do only for is we keep the label up so that it's visible and you use two hands to pour so something like this yes this looks like a solid dark beer if you remember from the last spot we're at yes we have to come by if i'm koh hai two hands but if we respect the other person we wanna lower our beers so so no no no no come mine's dark beer so i can taste the stout this is not bad at all yours probably just tastes like beer right i can't say it actually tastes like beer well because it is so chewy it is not beer yeah but it does have a hint of beer taste and that's probably because it does have hops in it mostly i feel like i'm tasting the shochu or the um the japanese vodka the taste almost reminds me of a mix between a high ball and a beer oh okay i see what you mean yeah because high ball is also shochu right no well it's the carbonation that it's a little bit lighter like it's not like you can't taste the beer as much yeah it's a little bit thin yes thin is a good word for it it is a little thin it's not as like heavy as a as a beer is to go back a little bit more into history this is they couldn't have real beer so this is the next best alternative right exactly a little bit of like the poor man's beer it is a hundred percent of poor man's beer ultra still there you can still enjoy this today and hey it's pretty fun so it's fun it's fun and it's like a nice little taste of history yes i like it how does that one taste definitely has that dark beer flavor but it is like a dark beer high ball i would say a dark beer high ball beer high ball interesting give our food a try so we've got our izakaya food today um we've got an otoshi which is a appetizer it comes with your meal it's almost like a seating chart pretty much most people like me don't like getting otoshi because i didn't order it but this is just another part of japanese izakaya culture sometimes you know sometimes they are not to your taste this one looks really good though i'm actually very happy to get this in hoshi the dancing bonito flakes it looks weird if you watched them for too long but they are not alive they're not alive [Music] this is really good actually we have to go at least halfway this is the game i've never been good at chugging and it's cold and you get brain freeze all right guys so we've talked a little bit about japanese drinking culture today and we've even experienced a standing bar or tachynomia and we've even tried our historical drink the hoppy which has been a really fun experience i hope you guys enjoyed learning about that and if you guys want a part two of japanese drinking culture video let us know leave a comment down below if you'd like that to happen and maybe max will join us again for another video we'll see hit the like button hit the like button and don't forget to comment and subscribe as well and the bell the notification bell the final comply come by and we'll see you guys in another video see ya bye goodbye

Channel: Japan by Food

Views: 270,267

Keywords: asakusa, ueno, tachinomiya, izakaya, kampai, hoppy, drinking, japanese drinks

Id: lH2PqCdX5HI

Length: 14min 10sec (850 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 13 2020