Category Archives: Japan

Teenager Plus Coffee Equals Headphones for Daddy

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I’ve written before about how I didn’t discover coffee until I was at university and, after a while, became an unapologetic addict. Part of my tardiness in discovering coffee was that the first coffee I remember trying was drowned in non-dairy creamer and artificial sweetener (think about the chemicals involved in that). It was horrid and I can still taste it as I’m thinking about it. Eventually, I tried coffee-plus-desert concoctions until a lack of cash led me to line up espresso doppios like tequila shots on a Saturday night.

The other day, though, I got a shock to the system. She Who Must Be Obeyed had just made a fresh pot of coffee and was pouring herself a cup and as I was walking up to liberate some from her tyrannical clutches (something like that) I saw her add cream and sugar to the cup. My immediate reaction was “The horror! She doesn’t love the coffee.” or that she was disguising the dregs of the morning pot to make them palatable–a step, for the record, I consider unnecessary. I asked her why she was ruining the coffee and she said it wasn’t for her, it was for our oldest.

The conversation then proceeded something like:

Me–Oh, yeah, that makes sense. (Pregnant pause) Why the hell are you giving caffeine to a thirteen year old girl? Don’t you know what can happen?
SWMBO–But she’s studying for her final exams.
Me–Oh, yeah, that makes sense. (Little bit pregnant pause) Why the hell are you giving coffee to a thirteen year old girl? Don’t you know what can happen?
SWMBO–Here’s your coffee.
Me–Oh thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you (long slurp of coffee) love you.

The results of this chemical experiment have been mixed. Yes, our oldest stays awake and “studies” in between YouTube videos on her pink Nintendo 3DS. However, sugar plus caffeine plus puberty equals hyper activity and frequent arguments over Nintendo 3DS use, fights over proper length of study time, frequent back talking and frequent eye rolling. Basically, two caffeine enhanced alpha females begin struggling over control of the house whilst daddy washes his hands and changes his name to Pontious Lively and puts on headphones and listens to “Pompeii” and “Radioactive” on endless loop because apocalypse.

I remember being shocked when I learned some of my Japanese friends’ children were drinking coffee in high school and, given my history, am amazed that my oldest even likes coffee.

She also crawls across the ceiling surprisingly well.

The Fine Art of Loafing and Leaving Well Enough Alone

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Today I was so lazy I actually offended myself. I did a little writing, a little reading and studied a little but mostly I did a lot of loafing. Occasionally I stared at the list of things I’d hoped to accomplish today and basically went “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” and went back to loafing.

This is partly because Friday was one of my more hectic days at work. It was a testament to what happens when you make the mistake of trying to change things that worked well in the past and have been running more-or-less smoothly. It was also a testament to the dread that the changes will fall apart and everyone, including you, will blame you.

Several years ago we (the foreign English teaching staff at the school) got tired of the available textbooks for our second year (11th grade) high school classes and instead decided to make our own materials. Our original plan was to collaborate on materials but the pressures of work (we are each in charge of the curriculum for a grade) kept the rest of us busy and the materials more or less became the vision of whichever teacher happened to be in charge of the grade at the time. This kept a supply of fresh material but also required that we either recycle past materials or go absolutely nuts and make something new.

This year, since I’m in charge and we have three new teachers, I decided to go absolutely nuts (shut up–you know who you are–shut up). I jettisoned an entire term’s worth of my old material and moved second term to first term. This doesn’t seem particularly crazy except we decided to have the students make a two minute commercial for a new invention as their final project. That itself would be fine except we also decided to film the commercials and show them in class on the last day.

This means we’ve basically been experimenting on our students. We’ve been like “Here, take this green pill and the little pink one. Now fly.” (Something like that.) Friday was, after a couple delays to give the students more writing time, the first day of filming. I spent the morning running around securing cameras,; realizing we had three cameras but only two tripods; scratching my head and going “what have I done?“; securing rooms and threatening my own students with failure if they didn’t hurry up; and memorize their scripts. It’s no exaggeration that I was more nervous than the students because if something went wrong, it would effect all four of us and not just me.

Luckily, in my class, I was able to film several commercials over the first two periods of class. Third period I had a break but was still on too much adrenaline to relax completely. Other teachers also managed to film some commercials and the results have been pretty good. By lunch time I was finally able to relax. Unfortunately, I haven’t actually stopped relaxing.

Of course, there’s a still a lot that can go wrong. I have to edit all those together and deliver the edited files to my colleagues. Oh, and I need to make a completely new curriculum for next term. I’ll get right on that, some day. But first I have to loaf.

Survival and Purists and Groups of Skinny Dippers

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When I was in Niigata, one of the things that got me through three years was the weekly gathering of the handful of teachers in my area.

Every Wednesday the five of us would meet on the train platform at Itoigawa station and take the train to a nearby onsen (hot spring bath). The ladies would head to one side and the gentlemen would head to the other where we’d go through the ritual of stripping naked, cleaning up, sauna, cold bath, jacuzzi bath, outdoor bath and then cleaning up again. We’d do this pretty much rain, sleet or snow–the onsen was actually at its best when it was snowing lightly. We enjoyed this so much we even invited visiting family members to join us–although we were requested to leave names out of all future discussions.

After that, we’d recover with a beer and then head to Naojiro’s, a bar run by a terrific guy who spoke English and was very patient with us and our loud English speaking foreign ways. We’d eat and drink as a group until a couple of us had to run for the last trains and that pretty much got us through the rest of the week. Even as an introvert, I was energized by these gatherings. We also were suspicious of one of the new guys (after several staff changes) when he didn’t join the Wednesday gatherings.

This is in contrast to the Peace Corps which holds that you should be looking to locals for your support group and they do their best to force that by dropping you off by yourself in a site and saying “do something photogenic that we can use in promotional materials” and “don’t embarrass your country.”

If you were near groups of other volunteers, you had to hope you weren’t near the purists who sought to so thoroughly immerse themselves in the local culture that they would barely speak English to you when you saw them. To make matters worse, their pronunciation was much worse than they seemed to think it was and they thought speaking soft and fast made them sound native. (All it really did was make them harder to understand than a native.) A typical conversation with a purist went something like:

Me–Hey, dude, long time no see!
Them–Frdap, holtan mikentanan, Doayayne. Kratt kratt moltantan brackan?
Me–Dude, I have to speak that crap every day, let’s relax a bit.
Them–Doayane, makartely hop hop shi makartely sey. Krappat nikata fortan nikto.
Me–Sorry, dude. Gotta run. Great seeing you, though.
Them–Krdap, mikenora, Doayayne.
Me–Fuckez-vous mikenora, dooshbackan.

(Note: this language was created purely in the mind of a madman for illustrative purposes only. Any resemblance to any language, living or dead, is purely coincidental.)

Now it’s true that most Peace Corps gatherings involve lots of complaints about being in the Peace Corps (it’s the toughest job you’ll ever love having completed but completely hate while you’re doing it.) This makes a lot of the gatherings tedious versions of the Four Yorkshire Men:

A–My village elders set fire to me every night and make me run around fetching gasoline.
B–LUXURY! At least they provide you some heat. Mine make me sleep on blocks of ice, even in winter. With no blanket, either, I tell you.
C–In my town they give me a blanket and then kill me and take it away again.
D–My town makes me teach without textbooks.
A–Stop talking nonsense, D. No one could ever be that cruel.

The same thing usually happened in gatherings of teachers in Niigata, too. But for our Wednesdays, we could usually keep the complaints in check. It was enough for misery to have company. And no purists around, just great people.

 

Snappy Clicky Pointy-Shooty Things

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Another thing you can blame on my father is my interest in cameras and photography.

For a few years, dad ran a photography business on the side and gave me my first camera: a Chinon, which is Japanese for “piece of shit with lens”. (No, really, look it up.) I don’t remember the type, although it was probably a CM-3 or a CM-4, but what I mostly remember is not liking the zoom lens he gave me.

Eventually, and I don’t remember when, he gave me a Canon AE-1P, which was a much better camera and pretty much solidified my interest in Canon cameras. I used it off and on through university and two trips to England and into the Peace Corps where, in two years, I only took a handful of rolls of film.

(Note to people under a certain age: cameras used to be loaded with rolls of silver-embedded strips of celluloid that, through a chemical process, recorded light and, through another chemical process, could be printed as pictures.)

(Another note to people under a certain age: People used to print pictures and display them on their walls.)

Eventually, I moved to Japan and, surrounded by lots of new camera toys–including a six-floor camera store full of them–I rekindled my interest in photography. I used the AE-1 more and bought a cheap twin-lens Texer Auto Mat medium-format camera. Also, after watching a late-night TV show about Yasuhara, a small camera company making rangefinder cameras compatible with Leica lenses, I made my first large internet purchase and got on the waiting list for T981(Ichishiki). I liked that camera a lot, but mostly for the Leica lenses.

However, our oldest arrived and brought with her increased demand for more and more and more photos. When she suddenly became mobile, and harder to keep in focus, I traded in a bunch of stuff and upgraded to an autofocus Canon EOS 1V which was a professional level camera and remains one of my favorite cameras ever.

Although I liked the 1V it was too heavy to carry around, so I bought my first digital camera, a Concord Eye-Q 5062AF which was reasonably priced at 20,000 yen (about $180 at the time) and took great pictures in daylight. (It was useless in low light.) The important thing about this camera was it showed She Who Must Be Obeyed the usefulness of digital cameras, especially when all we had to do was take a picture, upload the files and send them out to friends and family to alleviate the constant threats of violence (all, it should be noted, directed at ME, not at SWMBO. #yesatme).

Several years ago I finally took all my analog camera equipment (which at the time included the EOS 1V, the Texer, the Yasuhara and three of the cameras my dad had owned when he had his business) and traded them in for Canon EOS Kiss Digital X (known as the Digital Rebel XTi i North America because what guy would buy a camera called Kiss if it didn’t have demon paint and a large tongue and couldn’t bite the heads off bats?)

Since then we’ve been 100% digital and have saved a fortune on developing costs, except when I found some old film in a box back in the USA. I bought a Canon PowerShot G9 because I got tired of carrying the Kiss in my bag (which, I realize, sounds kind of dirty) and bought She Who Must Be Obeyed a digital camera she, quite frankly, has zero interest in. (Her basic argument is that it’s my job to take pictures, not hers. End of argument.)

I still try to remember how I got by with only 24 or 36 pictures at a time and try to imagine what covering a sports day here in Japan would be like with a film camera. I do miss the EOS 1V, but don’t miss the size.

In fact, the only thing I truly miss from the film days is the little canisters film came in. They are great for carrying change and storing small things.

Man With Bare Feet and Black Undergarments

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I spent the day helping break the hearts of young children and their parents, which isn’t a bad way to spend Father’s Day.

Today was an annual Junior Tournament for my karate style’s young people. It took place in a small octagonal gym in Eastern Tokyo and featured students from my Sensei’s regular dojo and students from around the Tokyo area. Because I wasn’t thinking (a common occurrence, actually) and didn’t realize it was Father’s Day, I agreed to serve as a judge.

Basically my job was to take off my shoes and socks and dress up in my black dogi (which are sometimes called pajamas but actually derive from undergarments) and my black and white belt and sit in a chair whilst a bunch of kids put on their best performances. Then I had to stand up and wave either a red flag or a white flag.

The first round was kata and I was assigned to judge the younger elementary school kids. Basically, they face off in pairs, with one wearing a red belt, and after they finish we three kings, er JUDGES, rise up and raise either a red flag or a white flag. The competitor with most flags moves on whilst the other sits and cries and ponders a bleak future (something like that) as their parents do the same.

For round two I was assigned to judge junior high and high school age boys (older kids are divided by gender; younger kids are not). If the judges are lucky, both competitors are doing the same kata, making it much easier to judge who did the better job. where it gets difficult is when they are doing different katas. You have to focus on poise and how well they perform the basics (as many stances and techniques carry over from kata to kata).  The main problem is the katas are longer at that stage and it’s really easy to drift off in to a daydream. If that happens, and I miss part of the performance, I simply vote for the kid who looks less likely to grow up to be a total douchebag.

After that I judged the bo staff katas for the younger kids and then got to watch and enjoy the spectacle of the fighting competition. Boys and girls as young as fourth grade dress up in body armor and helmets and get ready to fight. Once again, in the youngest bracket, boys and girls fight each other. In the older brackets, the genders are segregated. The judges and teachers take care to make sure all equipment is worn properly, to the point that if they don’t like a kid’s gloves–for example they are fingerless MMA gloves–they make them wear someone else’s.

I was standing near the court with the youngest kids and was having a great time watching the parents. They were caught between the sentiments of  “Please don’t get hurt” and “kick that little twerp’s ass! You are in the Octagon! There can be only one!” The girls held their own–and at least one delivered an impressive sounding punch–but the last girl standing lost the third place bout, leaving only boys in the top three. After the third place bout, a mother and grandmother were moved to tears because they were happy their young one had placed. (And I was thinking oh big whoop, he beat a girl to get third place but, miracle of miracles, I didn’t say anything because that girl probably could have kicked my ass and the boy’s mom definitely could have).

All in all, it wasn’t the most productive day, but it was a lot of fun.

 

Wired Wi-Fied Connected Always in a Crowd

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When I was in the slow process of smartphone shopping, my colleagues kept emphasizing how the phone–whichever one I chose–would change my life. They said it would be like a new addition to my family that would consume my time and slowly but surely consume my attention. I pointed out that I’d already had some of that experience after I got an iPod touch and started using it to check my email rather than wait for the squirrels in my old Windows desktop to wake up, smoke a cigarette and climb on the big wheel. They said, no, I would never be the same.

As you might imagine, none of this worked well as a sales pitch. Although their voices said it all as humorous warning, the cult-like gleam in their eyes said “join us join us join us join us join us”. What made it worse wasn’t even their fault: the introvert in me was pretty much going “we don’t join groups we don’t join groups”.

After I bought the phone they started chanting “we accept him we accept him one of us one of us gooble gobble”

Smartphones pose an interesting problem for introverts. Being connected to people via computers and email is no problem, because it’s easy to step away from the computer. Laptops in your bag have to be turned on. A regular cellphone is no problem because, except for a lesser ability to send text messages, its primary purpose is to make phone calls and no one actually uses cellphones or smartphones to make phone calls anymore which means you can still be alone.

Smartphones, though, provide a much different level of connectivity that is almost like having too many friends and family members living next door and across the street and upstairs. If someone has a question, they just hop over for a few minutes and an hour later they finally get to the question. You can be hit with text, chat, social media, social media chat, pictures of someone’s lunch, pictures of someone else’s lunch on the train platform, tons of pointless political bullshit–because the topics that aren’t discussed in polite society can be summarized in a meme or an article and quickly posted with no actual discussion.

It’s all vaguely fascinating, and it teaches you a lot about your family and friends but we introverts are, in many ways, selfish. We want interaction on our terms and I imagine a great many of us are looking for that dark corner in  the social media night club to hide in for a while.

Whilst we’re hiding there, we can check Twitter and Facebook.

A Victim of a Vague Sense of Fashionable Excuses

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Last Sunday, during karate class, to be kind to myself, I stunk the place up. I wasn’t in the mood to go but, over the years, have finally taught myself that those are the times I most need to go. That’s also true with writing–both my novel, my other novel, the other other novel, and this blog.

However, last Sunday’s lesson was so bad, and I had such a horrible lack of focus, that it has me thinking about excuses versus reasons.

One of the knife defense techniques we do involves stepping forward and catching the knife arm with our left hand and then doing a kind of hockey check with our right and then doing one of many techniques. The most difficult involves twisting the opponents wrist at the same time as you push his hand up toward his shoulder. Although I’m still pretty sloppy, I can do it consistently when my opponent has a knife. When my opponent has a sword, though, I find I can’t do the technique at all. I blame my height and my opponent’s lack of it.

As near as I can tell, when I’m defending against a knife, my opponent’s arm is in a high position, well above my waist, which allows me to do the technique. When he uses a sword, however, he’s using both arms, which gives him a stronger position, and they’re down below my waist. From that position, I find I can’t get the position and leverage I need to lift his arms. It’s the difference between lifting a heavy box off a table or lifting it off the floor. I would argue that I should focus on techniques that work against my opponent rather than one ones that I don’t think the laws of physics allow me to do.

Now, is all that an excuse, or is it a reason?

I ask because about a hundred years ago, more or less, in my Hayden, Colorado days, it was a tradition (in either 5th or 6th grade) that boys who volunteered could spend a week doing football practice (the kind with helmets, not the kind that England suffers at in the World Cup) and that culminated in a Friday game. This all started off with a bull rush to get uniforms and equipment.

The uniform , not the safety equipment, was the most important thing to get. The uniforms were either dark green (nicknamed the Green Bay Packers) or red (nicknamed the whatever the hell they are now Cardinals). Once issued a uniform, the recipients formed rival gangs and pretty much bullied each other for the rest of the week. (I vaguely remember there being depantsings of Cardinals which, well, yeah, think about it). The coolest uniform to get was the Green Bay Packers which meant the largest boys in the class wore green and you wanted to be on their team. (Remember: depantsings.)

At the end of the bull rush, which involved me being repeatedly pushed to the back of the line, I ended up with a pure white jersey that didn’t even have a number on it. This meant I was simply referred to as “white shirt” in practice. I wasn’t the only one who got a white shirt but I remember being bummed out about it. The white shirt wasn’t cool to wear on designated “wear your uniform jersey day”. I would be standing out without having any standing, if that makes sense. I went to one day of practice and then quit.

To this day I blame fashion for this as much as the soreness. Both are pretty weak excuses, though. I do wonder what would have happened had I been issued an actual jersey, Even now, I remain subject to those kinds of initial impressions. I’ve gotten better at recovering from them, but back then I couldn’t. I therefore didn’t give my best in practice–not that my best would have been that impressive anyway–and decided football wasn’t for me. (Believe me, it wasn’t.)  I sucked at basketball, too, but I liked playing basketball.

It turned out that I would have ended up as a Green Bay Packer and would have been on the winning team. It’s just no one would have known that.

Lightning and Thunder and Gurgling Oh My

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This one will have to be a short one, and it may even be cut short, as we are currently under a thunderstorm warning, complete with lighting and thunder. This means we might lose power at any moment (I’ve already got my blackout kit ready) and have had to move our car because the parking area fills up near the middle.

It also means I have to watch the drain on the balcony because it has a habit of back-flowing and slowly filling up the balcony. Basically, the gutters all empty out under our balcony and if the rain is too hard, the water takes a walk on our balcony. This video is something we showed our landlord a few years ago. He basically went, “yeah, interesting, great video”.

In my younger and stupider days (which contrast greatly with my older and stupider days), I used to like to go outside during a large thunderstorms. I enjoyed walking around barefoot in the rain (usually under an umbrella but not always) and experiencing the sound and sensory experience–remember I can’t smell the rain so this is how I have to enjoy it. I’d even roam around during lighting and thunder.

Then, of course, there’d be flashKAPOW moment and I’d go inside and dry off. I still enjoy going out in the rain, for the most part, but don’t enjoy the “Really, what the HELL are you doing?” looks from She Who Must Be Obeyed. Which is usually followed by tossed keys and “Since you’re out there acting like an idiot, anyway, go move the car.”

Now, of course, I’m expected to go work during the rain, which is no fun, especially as I’m expected to be presentable (well, at least be wearing presentable clothes) when I get to work. It’s also no fun getting to work in wet shoes and having to wear them all day. Yes, I know, I know, have a spare pair at work. However, Japan rarely has my size and shoes are expensive to import. Then, if it’s rainy season or the season in which it rains, I wear a second pair of shoes the next day, and get them soaked. The next three days are spent alternating between pairs of shoes that make squishing sounds as I limp around the school. (Nothing projects authority like a limp and a squish, which now that I think about it, sounds kind of dirty.)

The only good thing about it is that sometimes it rains hard enough to disrupt trains and I get the day off from work. I mean, it’s terrible when that happens and I’m deprived of the opportunity to go work. Yeah, that’s what I mean. Really.

The Nuremberg Rally of Annoying Cuteness

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Yesterday, on TV, was one of the most disturbing, yet adorable things, I’ve ever seen on television. It involved 80 young women in miniskirts and lots of chubby nerds waving glow sticks in the rain.

Before I get to that, though, I need to reminisce. One of the things I remember from when we still lived in Colorado was a short lived 1980 TV show featuring the Japanese pop duo Pink Lady. Mostly I remember them being both really cute and really bad actresses and that they sang “Knock on Wood”. I’d forgotten that Jeff Altman had been on the show and that they’d spent time in bikinis–Pink Lady, not Jeff Altman–which is something I’d normally remember. They also had a single reach 37 on the Billboard Top 40. The show was terrible and lasted only five or six episodes.

I didn’t realize until I got to japan how popular Pink Lady had been. Although they were already in their decline when they came to the USA–they broke up in 1981–when I got to Japan in 1996, even young people could still perform Pink Lady dances. (Their synchronized dances are one part aerobics and one part martial arts kata.) Here’s UFO, one of their biggest hits. You don’t need to understand Japanese, just watch the kata, er, dance. (Here’s another one from their peak era, 1977.)

One of the things foreigners don’t get about Japan is how intense the Japanese are about celebrities (called talents even if they have none). This is especially true of any groups that survive more than two years. Any group that does that begins to dominate television, including music shows and game shows. One quirk of Japanese TV is that most game shows are populated with celebrities and not ordinary people. There are lots of complicated reasons for this but that’s another post.

Very few groups, though have risen to the level of AKB48. They started out as a few young ladies performing in a small theater in Akihabara, the tech/geek district of Tokyo. Through clever marketing that played up the Lolita angle (they had a video that basically promoted “paid dates” and one that featured a soft core lesbian orgy/slumber party. Not safe for work.) They quickly grew to around 80 members and, if their expansion continues on pace, they will eventually rule Japan and the rest of the world.

One of the ways they stay fresh is to constantly rotate their lead 16 (called the Senbatsu) with members from the lower ranked groups. (Their structure is way too complicated to explain. Just think of it in terms of first string, second string, minor leagues, injured reserve.) Another trick is to involve the fans and let them vote on the order the girls should be in.

This is where the disturbing thing on television comes in. Once a year AKB48 take over a stadium and hold the Senbatsu Sousenkyou general election, which amounts to a political rally where fans can rank the girls. The girls are then forced to sit on stage until the results are announced whilst a stadium full of 70,000 chubby 20-something nerds ogle them and vote on them. The entire spectacle looks disturbingly like the Nuremberg Rally. (Here’s last years Sousenkyou; here’s the Nuremberg Rally.)

As their names are announced, each girl moves from a waiting area to her proper place on stage. The higher ranked girls get a chance to make a short speech. (Note: although they are part of the same group, the girls all have different managing agencies and are desperate to get a high rank and more exposure.) The winner becomes the official leader of AKB48 and gets a lot more air time than the others. This year’s winner was the annoyingly cute Mayu Watanabe (nickname Mayuyu). She was even dressed up like a queen (scroll down a bit) and given the chance to make a speech.

She said basically “Thanks to all the other girls, who are all still my friends and I don’t think less of them. I promise to do a good job, even though it’s a difficult job. Thanks to all of, you, my fans, who made this day necessary. Now KILL ALL HUMANS! KILL ALL HUMANS! KILL THEM ALL!” Well, that last part might be a bit of an exaggeration, but I have no doubt that if Mayu Watanabe ordered the fans to seize the parliament and throw out Prime Minister Abe they would.

A Mayuyu administration might actually be worth considering. Maybe they really will rule the world.

Beer Flavored Alcohol Delivery Systems

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I’ve written before about my off again on again ambivalence to beer. I’ll drink it, but it’s not my first choice. Japan, though, makes great beer. The big four brewers, Kirin, Asahi, Suntory and Sapporo all make great mass market beer and the latter also owns Yebisu, a small brewery that makes the best mass market beer in Japan.

Partly as a result of this, the Japanese consume a lot of beer. It’s common for adult students to ask how much beer I drink every night and I’ve shocked them by saying that I usually don’t drink that much. Even my in-laws don’t always get that I don’t need alcohol with every meal. (Yes, even for breakfast. On New Year’s Day, it’s tradition to drink sake with breakfast.) Every now and then She Who Must Be Obeyed or I get a craving for beer and buy a couple cans. (Pizza and curry are usually involved.) We also occasionally get a craving for wine. Some of my former students would be shocked to know that there is currently no beer in our house (and as of an hour ago, there’s no bourbon either).

However, thanks to government intervention, drinking beer in Japan is rather complicated and one should be aware that all that’s golden is not beer. The first category to be aware of is happoshu (発泡酒) or low-malt beer. This was created based on a loophole that anything made of 67% malt or more was classified as beer and taxed accordingly. The market responded by making low-malt beer that, at first, was reasonably tasty. The government responded by taxing happoshu and the brewers responded by lowering the malt content to 25% and below. As result, Happoshu flavors run the gamut from “Yeah, this is Budweiser” to “Dude, who pissed in my mouth?”

To further defeat the tax man, Japanese brewers lost their minds and created Third Type Beer from soybeans, corn and peas. The result is beer-flavored beverages classified as liqueur rather than beer and which serve as little more than alcohol delivery systems. They maintain the alcohol content, though, and are cheap. They therefore serve well as the “beer” you serve after your guests are a bit drunk and their taste buds have gone numb. (Not that anyone would ever be so, well, actually, yeah, I would totally do that.)

For me, though, this is mostly moot. Because we rarely drink, when we do have beer in the house, we usually only drink it with supper. If I’m having an after dinner drink I prefer bourbon or scotch.

But I’m weird that way. My former students would definitely concur.